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By LADY GREGORY 
Drama 

SEVEN SHORT PLAYS. 

FOLK-HISTORY PLAYS. 2 VOLS. 

NEW COMEDIES. 

THE GOLDEN APPLE. 

THE DRAGON. 

OUR IRISH THEATRE. A CHAPTER 

OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
THE KILTARTAN MOLI]i;RE. 
THE IMAGE AND OTHER PLAYS. 
THREE WONDER PLAYS. 

Irish Folk-Lore and Legend 

VISIONS AND BELIEFS. 2 VOLS. 
CUCHULA^N OF MURITHEMNE. 
GODS AND FIGHTING MEN. 
SAINTS AND WONDERS. 
POETS AND DREAMERS. 
THE KILTARTAN POETRY BOOK. 
THE KILTARTAN HISTORY BOOK. 



HUGH LANE'S LIFE AND ACHIEVE- 
MENT, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF 
THE DUBLIN GALLERIES. 



The Image 

and Other Plays 



By 

Lady Gregory 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Ilbe 'Knicftetbocker press 

1922 



t'^ 



Kll- 



Copyright, 1922 

by 

Augusta, Lady Gregory 

Made in the United States of America 



These plays have been copyrighted in the United States and Great 
Britain. , . . 

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages. 

All acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved in the 
United States, Great Britain, and all countries of the Copyright Union, by 
the author. Performances are forbidden and right of presentation is 
reserved. . .. . . 

Application for the right of performing these plays or reading them m 
public should be made to Samuel French, 38 West 38th St., New York 
City, or 26 South Hampton St., Strand, London. 



m 28 1322 




g)Ci.A661038 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Image . ^ i 

Hanrahan's Oath loi 

Shan WALLA 135 

The Wrens 225 



111 



WHEN THIS PLAY WAS FIRST PRINTED 
ELEVEN YEARS AGO I DEDICATED IT ''TO 
MY NEPHEWS HUGH LANE AND JOHN 
SHAWE-TA YLOR, I MAGE- MAKERS," AS I NOW 
. DO TO THEIR DEAR MEMORY. 



Persons 



Thomas Coppinger 
Mary Coppinger . 
Malachi Naughton 
Brian Hosty . 
Darby Costello 
Peggy Mahon 
Peter Mannion 



A Stonecutter. 
His Wife. 

A Mountainy Man. 
A Small Farmer. 
A Seaweed Hawker. 
An Old Midwife. 
A Carrier. 



THE IMAGE 

ACT I 

Scene: A village street with a thatched house on 
either side, both whitewashed, one very poor. 
Grey sea and grey hills seen beyond a wall of 
loose stones. Some headstones are propped 
against the wall, one inscribed "Erected for 
Thomas Coppinger and Posterity." Cop- 
pinger is looking at it. Mrs. Coppinger, with 
her back to him, is looking out over wall. 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Putting out clothes to dry on 
the wall.) If we heard noises in the night time I 
heard a great silence now. I was looking out to 
see what was it ailed the place. What has hap- 
pened all the neighbours I wonder ? 

Coppinger: I was wondering that myself. I 
don't see Brian Hosty or Darby Costello in any 
place, or anyone at all only Malachi Naughton, 
the crazy mount ainy man, is coming hither from 
the strand. 

{He sits down and chips at headstone.) 
5 



6 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: It is a queer thing you to be 
content, Thomas Coppinger, and you knocking 
out a Hving among the dead. It is no way con- 
tent I myself would be, and to be following a trade 
that is all for gloom. 

Coppinger: It is not, but in the world wide 
there is not so lively or so pleasant a trade. Wait 
now till I'll sound that out to you. A man to be a 
herd now, and to be sent back out of the fair with 
beasts, the very time the sport would begin, or to 
be landing fish from a hooker and to be made take 
the tide at the very minute maybe the crowds 
would be gathering for a race, or an assizes, or a 
thing of the kind, it is downhearted you would be 
coming into your own little place, and all the stir 
left after you. But to be turning back from a bury- 
ing, and you living, and all that company lying 
dumb, and the rain coming down through the clay 
over their heads, and their friends crying them, 
that is the time your own little cabin would shine 
out as good as a wake house, in the time a wake 
house was all one with a dance house. 

Mrs. Coppinger: That is not so in this place. 
No playing or funning or springing, but to be talk- 
ing they do be, stupid talk about themselves and 
to be smoking tobacco. 

Coppinger: And another thing. It is very 
answerable to the soul to be always letting your 



The Image 7 

mind dwell on them that are gone to dust and 
to ashes, and to be thinking how short they were 
in the world, and to be striving to put yourself 
in terror of eternity. ''Vanity of vanities," said 
King Solomon, and he owning all his riches and his 
own seven hundred wives. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It's time for you give in to 
my asking, and to bring me away to the States, 
and the work all wore away from you, the way 
you have no earthly thing to put your hand to 
but that headstone of your own. There doesn't 
be so many wakes as there were, or so many bury- 
ings, or the half of the people in the world that 
there used to be. 

Coppinger: The headland is a very whole- 
some place, without killing or murdering, and 
the youngsters all go foreign, and in my opin- 
ion the dead are nearly all dead — unless it 
might be old Peggy Mahon within in the house 
beyond. 

Mrs. Coppinger: With all the children she 
brought home to the world, and all the women 
she saved from being brought away, she is near 
spun out herself. There are some would give 
the world to be gone altogether with the state 
she is in. And it's time for her to go anyway. 
Cross she is and peevish, and in troth she'd be 
no great loss. 



8 The Image 

Coppinger: Let you not be talking that way. 
It never was a habit of my habits to wish any 
harm to a neighbour, or to call down misfortune 
on them at all. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It's a poor job to be lettering 
out your own name and for no profit. And you 
should be near done by this anyway. ' ' In memory 
of Thomas Coppinger and Posterity." What is 
there to put to that but the day of your death, 
that it would fail you to have foreknowledge of, 
and the day it's likely you have no remembrance 
of, that you made your own start on the plains of 
this world. 

Coppinger: That is not enough. That is 
what has to be put on the slab of many a common 
man, where he did no big thing, or never stretched 
a hand to the poor. 

Mrs. Coppinger: And what will there be to 
write on your own slab, more than that you lived 
and died on the Munster side of the headland of 
Druim-na-Cuan, and knocked out a poor way of 
living, hammering at hard stones ? 

Coppinger: No fear of me being left that way. 
Some thing will come to pass. Some great man 
might come wanting a monument that would 
put up my name for ever. Some man so great 
his death would put away laughter in Ireland. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Ah! If it is waiting you are 
for such a one to die, sure you don't know is he 



The Image 9 

born at all yet, or his father or his grandfather, 
or at what time he might be born through the 
next two thousand years. You are talking as 
wild as a dream might fall upon you in the night 
time. 

Coppinger: There is dreams and dreams. And 
at every thousand years some great thing is apt to 
happen, such as the Deluge or the coming of the 
Milesians into Ireland — I tell you there is dreams 
and dreams. {Turns and chips away at headstone.) 
{Malachi comes in slowly L. and blinks at 
them.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: Well, Malachi Naughton, 
God bless your health, and what's the best news 
with you? You have the appearance of getting 
bad nourishment. They were telling me your 
hens were all ate with the fox. I wonder now you 
wouldn't quit the mountain side, and come make 
your dwelling in some place there would be com- 
pany. 

Malachi: The towns do be in uproar and do be 
crowded, and the roads do be wet and wide; and 
as to the villages, there is spies in them, and 
traitors, and people you wouldn't like to be talking 
with. Too venomous they are and too corrupted 
with drink. I'd like to keep my own company, 
and I to have no way of living but the berries of 
the bush. 



10 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: There is no crowd in this place 
to-day, and no person at all to be heard or to be 
seen. 

Malachi: That wasn't so a while ago. {Turn- 
ing to Coppinger.) Tell me, Thomas Coppinger, 
did you hear e'er a noise in the night time? 

Coppinger: What way wouldn't I hear it? 
Thunder it's likely it was that was breaking from 
the clouds and from the skies, the same as it did 
ere yesterday, the time the Kerry men's hooker 
was destroyed out from Gal way. It's likely the 
weather will cheer up now, the thunder having 
brought away the venom out of the air. 

Malachi: The clouds of the air had no hand in 
it at all. Thunder is natural. I tell you it is more 
than thunder came visiting this place last night. 

Mrs. Coppinger: I was thinking myself it was 
no thunder. It was more like the roaring of calves, 
or the drowning of hundreds, or all the first cousins 
coming racing with their cars to a wedding after 
dark. 

Coppinger: (Rises and looks over wall.) Have it 
your own way so. I'll go meet Brian and Darby, 
and they'll tell you was it thunder. I see Brian 
coming hither over the ridge is above the cliffs. 
Have you my boots cleaned, Mary, till I'll put 
them on to my feet ? 

{He goes into house.) 



The Image n 

MalacM: It was no thunder was in it, but the 
night that was full of signs and of wonders. 

Mrs. Coppinger: What is it makes you say 
that ? I didn't see any wonder you'd call a wonder. 
It's likely it is in your own head the wonders were. 

Malachi: A little bird of a cock I have, that 
started crowing in the dark hour of the night, 
the same as if the dawn had come and put him 
in mind of Denmark. 

Mrs. Coppinger: A cock to crow out of season 
is no great wonder, and he to be perched on the 
rafters, and you maybe to be turning yourself on 
your palliasse, that would be creaking with the na- 
ture of the straw. 

Malachi: Great noises I heard after that, as 
if of tearing and splashing and roaring through 
the tide. 

Mrs, Coppinger: I heard them myself as good 
as you. I was in dread it might be the day of 
judgment. To put my head in under the quilt 
I did, till such time as it had passed away. 

Malachi: It was not quieted till after the 
whitening of the dawn in the vskies. I went out 
at that time thinking to see the goat that was up 
to her kidding time, and she had the rope broke, 
and the stone thrust away that was in the door 
of the little pen I had made, and there was no 
sight or mind of her. 



12 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: Is it searching after her yet 
you are, or did you find her gone astray among 
the rocks ? 

Malachi: Down by the brink of the sea I 
found her, a place she never was apt to go, and 
two young kids beside her, she that never had but 
the one before ; and more than that again 

Mrs. Coppinger: You'll be in Heaven, she to 
have kidded, the way you'll have a drop of milk 
with your tea. 

Malachi: Two young kids beside her on the salt 
edge of the tide, and she chewing neither dulse, or 
carrageen, or seaweed, but lying in full content, 
and as if brov\rsing upon a little bit of a board. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Goats will eat all. There was 
a neighbour's goat mounted up on my own dresser 
one time, and made as if to devour the blessed 
palm was on the wall. 

Malachi: Did ever you hear up to this, Mrs. 
Coppinger, a beast to have got nourishment from 
a board? 

Mrs. Coppinger: I did to be sure. Isn't it the 
way the body of Blessed Columcille was tracked 
the time it was sent back across the sea to Ireland 
for its burying ? To sculpture directions on a stick 
they did, and it was a cow went licking it the time 
it was come to land. It is likely you heard that 
yourself? 



The Image 13 

Malachi: {Going to her and drawing a hoard 
from under his ragged shirt.) You that can read 
writing, ma'am, sound out to me now the testi- 
mony is on that board. 

Mrs. Coppinger: So there is a name on it in 
painted printing — H, H, u, g, h — Hugh — Hug-h 
O'Lorrha. 

Malachi: Hugh O'Lorrha — I was thinking, 
and I was. near certain, the time I saw the letters 
it was the name of some person was in it, that 
had sent some message into my hand. Tell me 
now, ma'am, have you any account at all, or did 
ever you hear it told who was Hugh O'Lorrha? 

Mrs-. Coppinger: It seems to me to have heard 
such a name, but I can put no face to it or no 
account. There's many things I forgot that I 
heard in my lifetime. I only recollect things in the 
broad. {Shades her eyes and looks out over wall.) 

Malachi: There should be some meaning in it 
and some message. No doubt about it at all, it 
was a night full of wonders — Down in the tide 
there to be the noise as of hundreds, the bird in 
the rafters making its own outcry, and its call — 
the goat to be bringing me to that bit of a board — 
Hugh O'Lorrha, that should be a very high sound- 
ing name. What it is at all he is calling to me, and 
bidding me for to do ? 

(Brian Ho sty comes in.) 



14 The Image 

Mrs, Coppinger: {Turning to door .) Come out 
here, Thomas. Here is Brian Hosty before you. 

Coppinger: {Coming out.) There is no need for 
me go seek him so. Well, now, Brian, didn't you 
go abroad very early this morning? 

Hosty: It's easy rise up and go abroad early 
the time there does disturbance come, that will 
put away the sleep from your eyes. 

Coppinger: You heard the noises so? 

Hosty: What would ail me not to hear them? 
You would hear that roaring three mile off, as 
well as you would hear it a mile. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Was it a fleet of seals maybe 
was coming in against the rough weather does be 
prophesied in the skies ? 

Hosty: Did any one ever hear a fleet of seals to 
be giving out a sound like eight eights crying 
together, or like the seven banshees of Lisheen 
Crannagh? You to have seen those two beasts 
fighting through the tide, you would know them 
not to be seals. Tearing and battling they were. 
At the time they commenced roaring I went out, 
and Darby Costello rose up and put the crowbar 
to his own door, in dread they might be coming 
into the house. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Beasts is it? Tell me now 
what were they at all. 



The Image 15 

Hosty: Whales they were — two of them — they 
never quitted fighting one another till they came 
up upon the strand, and the salt water went and 
left them, that you would be sorry to hear them 
crying and moaning. 

Coppinger: And is it on the strand they are 
presently? 

Hosty: They are, and it is on the Connacht 
side of the headland they took their station, as 
was right. 

Coppinger: Take care but the tide might steal 
up on them. But I suppose they are dead by this ? 

Hosty: What would hinder them from being 
dead? . I am after going where they are, myself 
and Darby Costello. To cut a bit off of one of 
them I did. The flesh of it was like the dribbled 
snow, the same as a pig you would kill and would 
be after cleaning out for hanging, as clean and as 
white as that. And as for size, you to go up on 
them, you could see the whole of Galway. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Would you say there to be 
oil in them ? I heard in some place the oil would be 
rendered out of a whale would carry a big price. 

Hosty: Oil is it? I took a wisp of straw and 
lighted it at the side of one of them, and the oil 
of it went out into the sea, and never mixing with 
the salt v/ater at all. The whole of the lakes of 
Ireland and the wide Shannon along with them. 



1 6 The Image 

there is enough of oil in those two whales to make a 
scum and a covering over the whole of their brim. 

Mrs. Coppinger: That now is maybe the luck, 
Thomas, you were thinking would be drawing 
towards you. Gather now all the vessels in the 
place till we'll see what we can bring away of oil. 
Here now is the tub, and the big pot, and the 
kettle. 

Hosty: I heard one time there was a doctor 
back in Connemara gave a pound a gallon for the 
oil was rendered out of a whale. To cure ulcers 
and cancers I suppose it did, the same as king's 
blood used to cure the evil. 

Mrs. Coppinger: That's a whip of money! 
Let me see can I empty the milk out of the churn. 
{Mr. and Mrs. Coppinger go into house.) 

Malachi: (Coming near.) Whales? Did you 
say it was whales came visiting this strand in 
the night time? 

Hosty: Amn't I after saying that it was? 

Malachi: What was it now brought those 
beasts to be travelling to this headland more than 
to any other place, and to find their own track 
to it across the wide ocean ? 

Hosty: What would bring them but chance, 
or ignorance or the blindness that came on them 
with the strokes they were striking and hitting 
at one another under the waves. 



The Image 17 

Malachi: It was those beasts so, brought that 
name and that board of timber. Who now in 
the wide earthly world will tell me who was 
Hugh O'Lorrha? (Goes off .) 

Hosty: (To Mrs. Coppinger, who has come to 
door.) What at all is Malachi raving about, Mrs. 
Coppinger, with his cracked talk and his question- 
ing? 

Mrs. Coppinger. Ah, that is the way he is, and 
somxCthing gone queer in his head. There is noth- 
ing left to him in life but high flighty thoughts. 

Hosty: (Looking at vessels.) Well, Mrs. Cop- 
pinger, it's a share of the good things of the world 
you will be getting this time surely. It's to quit 
stone-cutting you will bring Thomas Coppinger 
that time. 

Coppinger: (Leaning out over door.) No fear of 
me, Brian. Did ever you find east or west any 
place at all I broke my word? And isn't it long 
I promised you to print your own headstone and 
to dress it for you, the time your end would be 
drawing near? 

Hosty: I'm very thankful to you, Thomas. I 
am thinking it is a good while you are putting 
off making an end and a finish of your own slab. 

Coppinger: There is reason in that, I am 
thinking I might get a name yet would look 
bigger and handsomer on my tomb. 



1 8 The Image 

Hosty: Whatever way you may write out your 
name or raise it, it will be but Thomas Coppinger 
in the end. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It might not. Look at all 
that voted for the Parliament going from College 
Green to England, and that went to bed nothing 
and rose up lords in the morning! I would like 
well Thomas to be a lord, with two hundred acres 
of land. 

Hosty: Well, it's the people of Munster are 
taken up in themselves with pride and with con- 
ceit ! My joy that I was not reared among them, 
but in the bright beautiful province of Connacht ! 

Mrs. Coppinger: Let you keep your great 
praises of Connacht and your talk for them are 
the other side of the earth and cannot see into it, 
as I myself can see it over the mering wall, and the 
fields that are all a flag, and the thistles as hardy 
as our own and as bold. It is not here I myself 
would wish to stop, in a narrow barren place, 
where you never would get your fill of the world's 
joy. It's out to America I would go, and a fair 
wind blowing ! 

Hosty: I know well what it is you are dreaming 
to find before you in the States — beer from Den- 
mark, honey out of Greece ; rings and brooches and 
such things as are dear to women ; high blood and 
grandeur and ringing of bells; a silver cushion 



The Image 19 

having four edges, and you sitting on it through 
the day time the same as the Queen of Pride, and 
talking of the ways of the world and the war! 
But remember now I was in America one time 
myself ! 

Mrs. Coppinger: Why wouldn't there be gran- 
deurs and good houses in Boston or in New York 
where many a bright pound was spent upon them ? 

Hosty: All the grandeurs I saw was never the face 
of a fire but only a black stove, and not a chimney 
in the house but only a crooked pipe, and never a 
spring well but rotten water brought from the 
Lord knows where, and no way for going out unless 
you would take a stroll in a street car. And if 
there was quality food I didn't see it, or a bit of 
butter that was sweet ! 

Coppinger: {Leaning in the half door.) Let you 
leave challenging one another, and look at Darby 
Costello is running like a heifer had got a pick of a 
fly, or a rat there would be strong cats following. 

Mrs. Coppinger. {Jumps up.) Ask him what 
will he do with his share of the oil, and see will he 
be able to make a choice, besides putting insults on 
his next-door neighbour ! 

{Costello runs in breathless.) 

Hosty: Tell me now what will be your own 
choice thing out of the spending and the profit 
of the oil? 



20 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: Let you choose some big 
thing will set you free from drawing seaweed 
till the day of judgment ! 

Costello: I am striving to tell you that the 
whales 

Mrs. Coppinger: Tell us out quick now, what 
is your desire and your choice. 

Costello: Ah, now, what is my desire but peace 
and patience and to give no offence, or have any 
one annoying me, but there to be no law but love — 
and if I have another thing to ask it is leave to 
make my voice heard for one minute only, till 
you'll hear what I'm striving to tell 

Coppinger: A pound a gallon we are to get out 
of the oil ! It's the whole of us will get our chance ! 

Costello: Ah, quit talking till I'll tell you— It 
is little profit you will be getting for yourselves, 
where the whole country entirely is gathered at 
this time about the whales. In boats they are 
come from every side. Drawing lots for strips of 
them they are, the same as if they were seaweed 
on the sand. 

Hosty: They have no call to them at all! It 
is we ourselves were the first to find them and 
to put our mark upon their skin. Did you stand 
up to them telling them that ? 

Costello: It isn't easy stand up to a throng of 
them. From Oranmore they are come I tell you 



The Image 21 

and from Finevara and Duras and Ballindereen. 
The Kerry men were wrecked in the hooker were 
in it along with them, very wicked looking they 
were. 

Hosty: They have no claim at all to be coming 
to our headland and to be bringing away our prey. 

Costello: I was striving to say that much to 
them, fair • and civil ; and the face they put on 
themselves was not the face of a friend would be 
drinking porter with you, but of an enemy would 
be coming at you with a gun. To fire a stone at 
me a one of them did, and they wouldn't leave me 
till now in the living world if I didn't run. There 
were rocks threw after me all the length of the 
road. 

{Mrs. Coppinger goes into house.) 

Hosty: Give me a hold of a reaping hook till 
I'll go sweep them before me from where they 
are, and drive them under the sway of the living 
fishes of the sea ! 

Coppinger: {Picking up tools.) It is with my 
own hammer and my chisel I will tackle theml 
Leave your hand on a fork. Darby, or a spade, or 
so much as a big wattle of a stick ; and let one of ye 
be humming Lord Byron's march, and he going out 
to vv^ar ! 

Hosty: We'll put terror on them! We'll 
banish them ! 



22 



The Image 



Costello: {Sitting down.) Devil a fear of me! 
I had my enough, thinking as I did that I had not 
three minutes to live. There is nothing is worse 
than your own life, and what call have you to go 
losing it ? 

Coppinger: I never would go back before any 
enemy at all so long as my life would last! I 
tell you I never felt so merry in my life, and no 
bad bones about me. I wouldn't be afraid of the 
worst thing you could meet, a bee coming to sting 
you, or whatever it might be ! 

Costello: I wouldn't face them again, I to get 
all the whales of the big ocean. I tell you they 
are hardy lads. There's few of the police would 
like to grabble with them. 

Coppinger: It is crippled and crappled you are 
with age. Darby the way you do be failing in 
your walk ! 

Costello: I am up to no such great age, but my 
feet that are sore with all they sweated. But it's 
you yourself is getting very slack in your work and 
very attentive to your bed. 

Coppinger: Is it that you are saying I am an 
old spent man? I'm not so old at all! I'm not 
as old as the hills of Gowra, whatever age that is ! 
I'm not up to the age of Brian Hosty that has not 
hardly a blade of hair on his head, and has lost the 
whole of his teeth. 



The Image 23 

Hosty: Leave your finger in my mouth till 
you'll see did I lose my teeth ! 

(Peter Mannion comes in.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: Is it for commands you are 
come, Peter Mannion, and you going with your 
car to the town ? 

Mannion: The priest and the waterguard are 
after going where there is a gathering of strange 
lads around and about the two dead fishes on 
the strand. 

Coppinger: Sure it's to sweep the whole troop 
of them into the sea we are going out at this 
minute. 

'Mannion: The priest and the waterguard has 
them banished back to their own pariwsh and their 
own district. To give them great abuse his rever- 
ence did, and the waterguard threatened them with 
the law. 

Coppinger: Is it to drive them away clear and 
clean they did ? 

Mannion: Every whole one of them, big and 
little. 

Coppinger: It's the priest is well able to break 
a gap before him and to put justice and profit 
into the hands of his own congregation ! 

Hosty: To respect the first that came to the 
whales he will. 



24 The Image 

Mannion: It is what I was bid say, there is 
none of ye at all will get any hold of the whales. 

Coppinger: What's that you're saying? And 
a miracle after coming for to bring me my chance ? 

Mannion: The priest and the water guard has 
laid down that the whole of the gain and the riches 
within in those two beasts of the sea, is not to be 
made over to this one or to that one, or to be made 
any man's profit and his prize, but to be laid out 
for the good and for the benefit of the whole of the 
headland, and of this point. 

Ho sty: It is to the Connacht side they landed. 
It wouldn't be right giving the Munster side any 
share. 

Mrs. Coppinger: We should give in, so, I sup- 
pose and to put up with the loss. It's best not 
vex a priest or to rub against him as all. 

Mannion: Which now of ye is the oldest? 

Ho sty: What meaning have you asking that? 

Mannion: It is what I was bid say, there must 
some plan be made up without delay, for the 
spending of whatever will come from the whales. 
''It is the oldest inhabitant," says the priest, 
''should be best able to give out judgment as to 
that," — and then the waterguard — — 

Hosty: To make out a plan for the spending 
is it? That should be a great lift to any person. 



The Image 25 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Taking Coppinger's arm and 
pushing him forward.) Rise up now, Thomas 
Coppinger, and make your claim. You should be 
the most ageable person in the place, you are far 
before seventy years. 

Mannion: The waterguard that said then 

Hosty: {Pushing him away.) He is not the 
most ageable, but I that am older than himself. 
Look at the way he is fresh and flushy in the fea- 
tures, and no way racked looking the same as 
myself. 

{Mannion sits down and lights pipe.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: No, but tossed hair you are 
putting on yourself, and a cross face, the way you 
would look to be old. You to be minding and 
cleaning yourself you'd keep your youth yet. Tell 
them out now, Thomas, your age. 

Coppinger: What way could I say what age I 
am? When you are up to seventy year you 
wouldn't feel the years passing. I'm telling no lie 
saying that, no more than if I was on my knees to 
the priest. 

Hosty: I to have said you were passed your 
three score a half hour ago, it's likely you'd fly 
in my eye; but you have the tune changed now as 
quick as any piper. 

Coppinger: It's likely I have sixty years, and 
seventy years and another seventy along with 



26 The Image 

them if it was counted right. But you yourself 
are but upon the bruff of age. Look at you as 
straight as a ribbon ! 

Ho sty: If I am straight, it is because there is 
more spirit in the Connacht men than in the 
Munster tribe, and more of a name for decency! 
I can remember when you'd walk out as far as 
the strand to catch soles and turbots and every 
quality fish, before the trawlers had them all 
destroyed. 

Costello: No, but my mother that remem- 
bered my brother falling on me in the cra- 
dle, and hiding in the bushes all the day in 
dread of her. And he was seventy-three when 
he died. 

Hosty: Ah, you weren't any age much that 
time at all. It is suppler you are than the 
whole of us. But I myself was six months 
the time of the big storm, and that can tell no 
lie. 

Costello: My dearest life! Sure I remember 
the big wind myself and all that went before it, 
if it wasn't I was so neglectful and so heedless in 
my early time. 

Coppinger: My mother, God rest her soul, 
that I heard saying I had a year more than Brian 
Hosty. And she remembered the landing of the 
French at Killala. 



The Image 27 

Hosty: She did, and the Danes being driven 
out from Ireland I suppose, and the band playing 
Brian Boru's march ! 

{Peggy Mahon appears at her cabin door.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: There now is Peggy Mahon 
can settle the case. There is no person has know- 
ledge of years only herself, where the dates are 
away and astray, she being such an old resident 
and drawing to a hundred years. Come out here 
to us now, Peggy Mahon, and at the fall of night 
I won't leave you without a drop of milk for your 
tea. 

Coppinger: Ah, she is shook this long time. 
Where's the use making any appeal to her, and 
she having but old stories and vanities. 

Hosty: Look at here now, ma'am. Didn't 
you give aid to my own three sons coming into 
the world, that are at this time buried in Minne- 
sota? And my daughter that is looking at her 
children's children in Australia? And at that time 
I was up in age. 

Costello: {Pulling Hosty away from Peggy.) 
Look, ma'am, isn't it three score years since you 
coming to the house the time my first young son 
was born? And it is what you said, that he was 
a present from God. 

Peggy: So he was, so he was. Every baby is a 
present from God, it is for God we should attend 



28 The Image 

it. It is God puts you into the world and brings 
you out of it, and beyond that there is a woman 
in the stars does all. 

Coppinger: It is not well in the mind she is, and 
not remembering. 

Peggy: I remember, I remember. Lonesome 
after the old times I am. I am always remem- 
bering bye and bye. 

Coppinger: Cast back your mind so, to how 
many score years is it since you came attending 
the first wife I had, before I joined with herself 
secondly in marriage. 

Peggy: There is no second marriage, there is 
but the one marriage. He that was the best 
comrade, of a hasty man, God Almighty ever 
put a hand to, was brought away from me with 
little provocation twenty and half a hundred years 
ago. Brought away through death he was from 
this white world, and I myself left after him, a 
bird alone. 

Mrs. Coppinger: {To Costello.) The talk she 
does be always making about Patrick Mahon, you 
would say, listening to her, he was mostly the pride 
of the headland. And he but a poor-looking little 
creature they were telling me, and having an im- 
pediment in his speech. 

Costello: Old she is, and it's all in her brain 
the things she does be talking of. 



The Image 29 

Coppinger: And what way now will a judg- 
ment be made, and a decree, which of us should 
be leader ? 

Mannion: {Getting up.) It's time for you 
hearken to my news. The priest said the oldest 
man, and the waterguard said the three oldest, and 
the two of them agreed that if ye would agree 
they themselves would agree to that. I'll be 
coming again, where I have to bring the plan ye 
will lay out, to put before the Board of Guardians 
that are sitting on this day, so soon as I'll put the 
tacklings on the horse. {Goes.) 

Coppinger: I might be going to get m.y chance 
in the heel. Wait now till I'll lay m}^ mind to it 
for a while. 

Mrs. Coppinger: And what is your own mind, 
Brian Hosty, you that are my near neighbour and 
my most enemy ? Show us now what the intellect 
and the wit of the Connacht man can do. 

Hosty: I would not tell a lie for one or for 
two, and I declare now and nearly take my oath, 
that I to have my choice thing and the riches of 
Damer the Chandler, it is what I would wish, 
this little dry stone wall to be swept from this 
village where I live to my grief and my sorrow, 
and a ditch to be dug from the Shannon to the sea, 
would divide the two provinces, and would be 
wide enough and bulky enough to drown every 



30 The Image 

chattering word of the cranky women of Munster, 
and let me hear nothing but the sweet-voiced 
women of Connacht, from now to the womb of 
judgment. 

Costello: Oh, now, Brian Hosty, that is a very 
unneighbourly way to be saying such unruly 
words, that wouldn't be said hardly by the poorest 
person would be walking the road. 

Hosty: Tell out your own request so, and see 
will it give satisfaction, since you are so crabbed 
to be correcting myself. 

Costello: I wouldn't like to be going against 
any person at all. I would sooner to leave it to 
a committee. 

Hosty: So you would too, and you being every 
man's man. And its time for Coppinger to speak 
his mind, if his wife will but give him leave. 

Coppinger: Every man to his trade — and I 
would like well to keep to my own trade — It is on 
stones my mind is dwelling and on rocks. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Let you break up so and 
make an end of the rocks in the harbour where 
the Kerry men's hooker was broke up. To come 
against one of them it did, and never left it but in 
little sticks. A danger to ships they would be, and 
any ships to be coming in to the pier. They to be 
out of it, what would hinder ships coming in the 
way you could set out from this street to go to 



The Image 31 

America or around the world? You wanting 
some big thing to do, there you have it to your 
hand — The harbour of New York there beyond, 
and the harbour of Druim-na-Cuan to be here 
and the one ocean to be serving the two of 
them! 

Hosty: (Laughing.) You have a great notion, 
Mrs. Coppinger what sort the harbour of New 
York is, and you thinking to make the like of it 
in this place, with sails and steamers drawing in 
from the world entirely, and the statue of Liberty 
standing up high before you. 

{Malachi comes in and sits down at Peggy's 
door.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: Why wouldn't there be a 
statue? A statue is a thing does be put in many 
a place. Sure you can see one to Saint Joseph, 
Protector of the souls in Purgatory, all the same 
as life across the bay. - 

Hosty: And Thomas Coppinger that is think- 
ing to shape it out I suppose with his hammer, 
according as his fancy tells him what way it 
should be worked? 

Mrs. Coppinger: Why wouldn't he shape it 
and he having a mind to shape it, and being well 
used as he is to handle every sort of stone ? 

Hosty: It is not of stone, statues do be made, 
but of iron would be rendered into a mould, the 



32 The Image 

same as sheep's tallow you would be rendering 
for candles. 

Coppinger: I would never say iron to be as 
natural as stone, or as kind. 

Costello: Plaster now would be very tasty and 
very suitable, and a shelter to be put over it. It 
would be no way so costly as iron. 

Hosty: It is iron is more serviceable, and as to 
cost, the first expense would be the cheapest, the 
way it would be a good job, and not to turn against 
you after. 

Costello: What would you say now to cement, 
and a good stand being under it ? 

Hosty: If it was a statue was to be made, it's 
an iron statue it should be. 

Coppinger: And what way would you hoist it 
to its place? It would have the weight in it of the 
devil's forge. 

Hosty: And what do you say to the weight of 
stone? Look at that slab of your own that has 
a hole wore through the street, and it but two 
year or so leaning towards the wall. 

Coppinger: It has not a hole made, but to settle 
itself it did, against such time as it would be called 
for and be wanting. 



The Image 33 

Ho sty: I to have an estate I would bet it, you 
would not be able to lift it or to stir it from the 
place it is standing at this minute. 

Coppinger: I'll engage I would, and to throw 
it over the collar beam of the barn I would, the 

same as a sack of oats 

{They gather round headstone. Mannion 
comes in.) 
Mannion: Did you make up your mind yet to 
say out what thing it is ye have settled, for me to 
bring word to the Board Room in the town ? 

Hosty: What way can we make our mind up 
till such time as we have a finish made of this 
argument? 

Coppinger: Did you ever hear it said in any 
place, Peter Mannion, iron to be more answerable 
for an image than stone ? 

Costello: Wouldn't you say now, Peter, there 
is very lasting wear in cement ? 

Mannion: It is best for ye make your mind up. 
There are other old men in the district, and they 
getting older every minute. 

Coppinger. Give me but the time to bring 
proof to Brian Hosty that there is no weight to 
signify in a slab of stone. {Tries to lift it, and 
Hosty and Costello encourage him, with sarcastic 
applause.) 



34 The Image 

Costello: All the strength you have wouldn't 
lift that flag. 

Hosty: Lift it is it? If you were as strong as 
Finn MacCumhail you wouldn't lift it. 

Mrs. Coppinger: (Dragging Darby away.) You 
are a friendly man, Darby Costello, and always 
very liberal to do as I bid you, not like Brian that 
is stubborn — Let you settle an image to be 
made and be put up, and give the contract to 
Thomas — ^he is that greedy for work — and it 
would be a great thing for him rise out of head- 
stones, and to get a decent job 

Costello: I'd be in dread of Brian Hosty going 
against me. He is always someway contrary, that 
you couldn't teach him manners. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It would be handsome work 
for him, and who is nearer than a neighbour? 
It might put life in him that he would bring me 
away to America yet. But that to fail us we 
might as well close the door — You to give your 
vote for it, and Thomas to give it, that would be 
two against one. 

Mannion: {Turning from Hosty and Coppinger 
to Mrs. Coppinger.) Will you tell me what at all 
is it they are arguing about ? 

{Costello escapes and goes off.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: It is that they cannot agree 
what is the right material for to put in a statue. 



The Image 35 

Mannion: And is it a statue so, they have 
laid down as their choice thing and their plan? 

Mrs, Coppinger: Darby Costello will tell you 
if it is. Where is he? Well, he has but a bad 
heart of courage. Why would they be making 
so much talk about it, they not to have made it 
their plan ? 

Mannion: I would say it to be a queer thing 
for them to lay their thoughts to, and a very 
queer thing — Let me keep now the messages 
in mind — Candles for the shop — Paraffin oil for 
the priest — a pair of boots for the clerk — the Board 
of Guardians to be told there is a statue to be put 
up with the profit of the oil of the whales — {Goes 
off as Coppinger with a great effort upsets the stone, 
which falls with a crash,) 

Hosty: Do you call it lifting it to throw it 
down? 

Coppinger: Wait a minute now till I'll strive 
secondly ! 

Mrs. Coppinger: Thomas! It's time bring 
the mash to the cow — run Brian Hosty, there's a 
sheep of your sheep — unless it might be a stone — 

is lying on its back near its death (Brian 

jumps over wall.) 

Coppinger: But sure we made no settlement 
yet. 



36 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: (Shoving him into the house.) 
It's well for you to have some one to mind you 
and to take care of you— Believe me, Thomas 
Coppinger, you are going to get your chance! 



Curtain 



ACT II 

Scene same, hut night time. Moonlight. Candle 
and firelight shining from the open half -door 
of Coppinger's house. Mrs. Coppinger heard 
singijtg within. 

Malachi: (Coming down street.) The fall of 
night is come and I didn't find him yet. East 
and west I'll go searching for him, east and west — 
he to be in the hollow I'll be on the hill, he to be 
on the hill I'll be in the hollow ! 

Peggy: (Coming from her cabin with milk jug.) 
What is on you, Malachi Naughton, that you are 
running there and hither, as if there was one dead 
belonging to you ? 

Malachi: (Stops short.) It is long you are in 
this world, Peggy Mahon, and you knew a 
power of people from birth to age, and heard 
many histories. Tell me, now, did ever you 
know or did ever you hear tell of one Hugh 
O'Lorrha? 

Peggy. What would ail me not to hear of 
him? Hugh O'Lorrha — Hugh Beg O'Lorrha. 

37 



3^ The Image 

Malachi: That is it, ma'am, you have it — 
I knew well you should have that knowledge, and 
with all the generations that passed before you 
in your time. 

Peggy: (Sits down near Mrs. Coppingefs door.) 
I'd tell you out his story if I didn't think it too 
long to be keeping you on the soles of your feet 
while you'd be hearing it. 

Malachi: Tell it out, tell it out! You to be 
telling me his story through the length of seven 
year, I wouldn't be tired listening to it. 

Peggy: Ah, it's near gone from me. All such 
things are gone from me, with the dint of fretting 
after them that flew away. 

Malachi: You cannot but tell it. It is through 
miracles his name was brought to this place. I 
tell you it was not brought without wonders. 

Peggy: To leave his mother's house he did 

Malachi: So he would too. What would 
happen to the world the like of him to have stopped 
at home ? He wasn't one would be sitting through 
the week the same as the police, having his feet 
in the ashes. 

Peggy: Out fighting on the road he went 



Malachi: There were always good fighters in 
Ireland till this present time. The people have 



The Image 39 

no fight in them now worth while, so lagging they 
are grown to be and so liary. 

Peggy: Fighting, fighting. To get into some 
trouble he did — it is hardly he escaped from the 
Naked Hangman 

Malachi: It is the Sassanach twisted the rope 
for him so. Terrible wicked they were, and God 
save us, I believe they are every bit as wicked 
yet. Go on, ma'am, sound it out. Well, it was 
the one hand sent the whales steering over the 
tide, and brought me here to yourself gathering 
newses. 

Peggy: (Crossly.) Where is the milk, Mrs. 
Coppinger has me promised? I'll tell no more. 
There's too many striving to knock talk out of 
me, and the red tea stev/ing on the coals, and I 
myself weary and waiting for the drop of new 
milk. Is it coming out you are, Mrs. Coppinger? 

Mrs. Coppinger: (From inside.) I'll have it 
now for you within one minute. 

Malachi: They will mind me now, they will 
surely mind me now, when I tell them that name 
has to be put up. It is to myself the message was 
brought, Peggy Mahon, to put up the name of 
Hugh O'Lorrha, and to sound it in the ears of the 
entire world. Oh, there will be no fear from this 
out it will ever be disrem.embered again, or wither 
away from the mind of any person at all. 



40 The Image 

Peggy: Have you no one of your own to keep 
in mind, Malachi Naughton, that you should go 
battling for a name is no more to you than any 
other, and not to be content with your own 
dead? 

Malachi: It is more to me than any other 
name. It is a name I would go walking the 
world for, without a shoe to my foot! And why 
would I do that for any common person, would be 
maybe as ugly as the people I do be seeing every 
day, and as cross and as crabbed? What call 
would I have going through hardship for a man 
would be no better maybe, and no better looking, 
than myself ? 

Peggy: What sort of a tribe are you sprung 
from, or of a poor mount ainy race, that you would 
have no one of your own kindred or of your blood, 
would be worth remembering? 

Mrs. Coppinger: (Who has been listening, coming 
to door.) The doctor called death a shadow, and 
death called the doctor a shadow ! Faith the two 
of ye put me in mind of the both of them, and you 
disputing and arguing, and neither of you owning 
a ha'porth worth arguing for, or a perch of land 
only the street, or so much as a stim of sense. 

Malachi: Putting me down the whole of ye 
do be, and saying I know nothing; and I maybe 
as apt as the best of ye, and as wide awake. That 



The Image 41 

one counting her own dead in the one count with 
Hugh O'Lorrha. A man that robbed the apple 
from the hundreds! But his name will go up in 
spite of ye, if God has a hand in it ! 

Mrs. Coppinger: Leave arguing with him, 
Peggy, you might as well be talking with the 
wind. If you go fighting, can't you fight for things 
that are worth fighting for. 

Peggy: Why would any person go set their 
mind upon the hither side of the grave, and not 
upon the far side? I have seen them come and 
seen them go, the scores and the hundreds, the 
same as if they came on a visit to a neighbour's 
house, "and went from it again the time their 
clothes would be wore out and tattered. And 
the skin to be wore into rags, the soul is the one 
thing always, for it was the breath of God put 
into Adam, and it is the possession of God ever 
since. I know well where my own man is living 
yet, and where I will come to him when the Lord 
will send for me. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It is hard know that. Any 
man that goes to punishment doesn't come back 
to tell his story, and in Heaven I suppose they 
keep a fast hold of them too. This world's the 
best to keep your eye on. Who knows will we 
see them again, or will we care much about it if 
we do see them? It would be best for you have 



42 The Image 

taken another comrade in your bloom, in place 
of always lamenting him that is gone, and you 
without one to close your eyes the time you'll 
die, or the help of a man in the house, and without 
a son or a daughter in all Ireland. 

Peggy: You never laid an eye on Patrick 
Mahon, or never lived next or near him, and you 
saying that. The parting of us two was the parting 
of the body with the soul. I tell you there never 
set his foot on the floor of the world, and never 
told his secret to a woman, so good a man. Where 
would I find, east or west, the like of him of a com- 
rade? The time he wanted me, and some were 
again it, we gave one another a hard promise to 
let no person at all come between us or separate 
us. And after he going they had a match made for 
me with some man they were bringing into the 
house. But I said I never would rear a son to 
rubbish, and I drove them out. (She rises.) And 
if I was glad to get a dry potato at some times, and 
a bit of Indian meal itself in the scarce July, I have 
my promise kept. Why would I take a man, I 
said, and my comrade sleeping with no woman? 

Mrs. Coppinger: That's not the way with me, 
but I would sooner have some one to care and to 
nourish, than to be looking after a shadow you 
would have no way to be serving, but maybe with 
an odd prayer or a Mass, and that never might be 



The Image 43 

aware maybe were you thinking about him or 
remembering him at all. 

Peggy: It's likely he knows, though I never 
saw him since, and never had a sign or a vision 
from him, and it's often I went out looking for 
him at the fall of day. Never a sign or a vision, 
but often and often he came across me in my sleep. 
Waiting for him I do be till such time as I will come 
to him, where the Almighty has a very good place 
of His own. {Goes towards her own door.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: You might come to him, 
maybe — but it is hard to be sure of it, and what 
way can you know ? 

Peggy: {Turning.) What way can I know is 
it? I can give you God's bail for it. 

Mrs. Coppinger: There can be no bail better 
than that — But to get to our dead itself, it is 
not likely they would know us or recognise 
us, and the length of the years does be between 
us. 

Peggy: Don't be saying that! Don't be put- 
ting that word out of your mouth ! How dare you 
be putting your own bad thoughts between myself 
and my decent comrade ? 

Mrs. Coppinger: I didn't think you would be 
so much vexed I to say that. Here now is the drop 
of milk is warm from the cow yet. 



44 The Image 

Peggy- {Throwing it out of her jug.) I will not 
take it or take anything at all from your hand, 
and you after striving to rob me of my hope. I 
tell you, that to be gone from me, my heart would 
break, that is wore to a silk thread. He not to 
know me is it? Oh, Patrick! Oh, my grief! and 
maybe it might be so. For what am I but a bent 
crooked hag, withering through the world, and you 
yourself being, as I think, one of the fair-haired 
boys of Heaven ! {Goes in and shuts door.) 

{Mrs. Coppinger goes into her house. Cop- 

pinger and Costello come in. Coppinger 

crosses to his own door.) 

Coppinger: Well, now the hurry of the day 
is over, we can settle our minds to the choice we 
have to make for laying out the benefit of the 
whales. {Sitting down and taking hat off.) 

Costello: {Sitting down.) We'll get more fair 
play making a plan, and Brian Hosty not being 
in it, to be running down and ridiculing every 
word at all we will say. 

Coppinger: Ah, that is but a way he has, and a 
habit of his habits, to be running down every 
Munster person, and to be drawing his own pro- 
vince upon us. He to be cross, it is that the genera- 
tions were cross before him. 

Costello: I don't know are we any way fitted 
to be taking such a load upon our shoulders at all. 



The Image 45 

Coppinger: Why wouldn't we be fitted? A 
man that has the gift, will get more out of his 
own brain than another man will by learn- 
ing, and there's many a man without learning 
will get the better of a college bred man, 
and will have better luck too. It's a great plan 
we will be making and a great story and a great 
sound through the whole ring of Ireland. 
{Ho sty comes in, gloomily.) 

Costello: We were just waiting for you, Brian 
Hosty, till we'd start talking in earnest about the 
spending of the profit of the whales. 

{Mrs. Coppinger comes and stands at window, 
listening.) 

Hosty: It's a great deal of talk you are wishful 
to be making. I tell you, ye have done enough 
of talking. 

Costello: Ah, don't be so cross now! A person 
to be cross it would scare me. 

Hosty: It is the chat of the both of ye, and 
your talking, has caused the appearance of 
fools to be put upon us and upon the whole of 
the headland, with the plan ye made up, and 
that ye sent unknownst to myself to the Board 
Room. 

Coppinger: Sure we made no choice at all yet 
and no plan. We didn't begin hardly to argue 
the matter yet. 



4^ The Image 

Ho sty: Who was it sent word to the Board of 
Guardians so, that the three best men of the point 
of Druim-na-cuan had their mind made up — for 
the benefit of the whole parish and its gain — to lay 
out the riches cast up by the sea into their hand, 
on no other thing than a — statue ! 

Costello and Coppinger: {Standing up.) A 
statue ! 

Coppinger: Sure we had no intention at all of 
putting up a statue. Only conversing about such 
articles we were. 

Costello: {Seeing Mrs. Coppinger make a sign 
to him.) ,It is likely Peter Mannion took in 
earnest the little argument we were going on 
with, and that Brian Hosty himself was the first 
to start. 

Coppinger: So he was, with his mention of the 
Statue of Liberty that is up above the harbour 
of New York. 

Hosty: Let Peter Mannion, that is coming up 
the street, be put upon his oath, till he'll say out 
who was it was seeking a job for himself, making 
mention of an image that would be cut out of 
stone. 

Coppinger: I was not seeking a job! I said, 
supposing there to be a statue wanted, stone 
would answer it best. I only said, ''supposing." 



The Image 47 

Costello: Sure it is only supposing the whole 
of us were. We were not meaning anything at all. 

Mannion: (Coming in.) I am after coming 
back from the Board Room. The plan you have 
made for the benefit of the headland was put 
before the Guardians. To give consent to it they 
were asked, and a grant if the means would run 
short. 

Coppinger: And is it a fact now, it was said be- 
fore the Board that the plan we had laid out was 
for a statue ? 

Mannion: Why wouldn't it, when that was 
what the three of ye had agreed ? 

Hasty.' The three of us! Glory be to God! 
And all the world knowing we are three men that 
never could agree ! 

Costello: My dearest life! And what now 
did the Guardians say hearing that ? 

Mannion: They said it was a very nice thought, 
no better, and a very good thing to do. 

Hosty: They said that, is it? 

Costello: The Lord protect and save us ! 

Mannion: Themselves or the Rural Council 
— I'm not rightly sure between them — will send 
a commission on next Friday, that is a holy-day, 
to take a viev/ of the site, and to lay the foundation 
stone. Speeches there will be, they bringing a 



48 The Image 

member of Parliament purposely, and a meeting 
with banners and with bands. 

Coppinger: And no one in the place fit to put 
up the monument but myself! Wouldn't that be 
enough of a story to put upon the headstone of any 
man at all? Didn't I know well it was a miracle 
brought the whales, the way I would get my 
chance ! 

Mannion: The Guardians are wishful to know 
the name is to be put upon the statue. 

Coppinger: The name is it? 

Mannion: The name to be sure of the patriot 
it will be made in the similitude of, and the shape. 

Hosty: The patriot ! 

Costello: It's a statue of Liberty Brian Hosty 
was talking about in the commencement. 

Mannion: Ah, who the hell cares about liberty? 
It is what the Board made sure you had the name 
chosen of some good man. Word I have to send 
them by the post-car will be passing at break of 
day. {Goes off up street.) 

Hosty: And in what place in the wide world 
are we to go looking for the name of a good man ? 

Malachi: (Rises and comes to them.) Is it what 
ye are going to do, to put up the name of some 
big man ? 

Costello: It is, and his image along with it. 



The Image 49 

Malachi: You need not go far looking for that. 
It is I myself am able to give you a name is worth 
while. As if blown away on the wind it was, till 
it was brought back this day, with messengers 
were not common messengers, but strange. You 
may believe me telling you he is the fittest man. 

Coppinger: Who might he be so, and where is 
he presently? 

Malachi: He not to be out of the world what 
would he want with miracles? He to be in it 
at this time wouldn't he be well able to cut a way 
for himself and ask no help from anyone at all. 

Cappinger: Tell us out who was he so ? 

Malachi: A man he was that left his mother's 
house where he was reared, and went out fighting 
on the roads of the world. 

Coppinger: There is many a one did that in 
the last seven hundred years. It was maybe fol- 
lowing after Sarsfield he went, and the Limerick 
Treaty broken ? 

Malachi: It was out against the English he 
went 

Hosty: A '98 man maybe? 

Malachi: It is hardly he escaped from the 
Naked Hangman 

Costello: No, but a '48 man. There was few 
that escaped in '98. 



50 The Image 

Coppinger: It's often their story wasn't put 
down right by the iUiterate people in the old 
time. Tell out his name now till we'll see what 
do we know about it. 

Malachi: A great name, a great name will go 
sounding through the world. It is I myself got 
the charge to bring it to mind. Though my 
clothes are poor my story is high! Did ever 
any of ye hear till to-day the name of Hugh 
O'Lorrha? 

Hosty: 1 never did. I think it is but foolish 
talk he is giving out, that we are fools ourselves 
listening to. 

Costello: I never heard it I think — or maybe 
I did hear it. 

Coppinger: It is not to a mountainy man it 
would be left to make that name known, and it 
being the name of any big man. And I myself 
never hearing it at all. {Goes and sits at his own 
door.) 

Hosty: It is down from the mountains the 
whole country is destroyed, so wild and so unruly 
as ye do be, and so ready to give an opinion on 
everything in the world wide. {He sits down at 
Peggy's door.) 

Costello: {To Hosty.) Light in the head he 
does be, every time there is a twist in the moon. 
It's best for him go back to the hillside. 



The Image 51 

Mrs. Coppinger: {At door.) Innocent he al- 
ways was, and where there is innocence there is 
ignorance. To speak to him at all would bother 
you, as much as it would bother himself. 

Ho sty: Laying down to us he is, to put our 
statue up to one Hugh O'Lorrha. 

Mrs. .Coppinger: Ah sure, he has my arm 
blackened with the dint of the pinches he gave 
me a while ago, striving to drive that story into 
my head, and he cherishing a bit of a board, and 
it squz up to his chest. 

Coppinger: Tell me this, Mary, you that have 
that much songs a horse wouldn't carry the load 
of them, did you meet in ere a verse of them with 
the name of Hugh O'Lorrha? 

Malachi: She did not to be sure. His name 
to be in a song, what would he want with stones 
or with monuments? Wouldn't any man at all 
be well satisfied, his name to be going through 
the generations in a song-. My grief that I haven't 
the wit to make a poem for him or a ballad, and 
it is a great pity I am not prone to versify ! 

Hosty: Ah, that one would keep you talking 
till the clear light of day ! Go leave us now, where 
we have business to be thinking of. 

Malachi: (Going to corner.) It is laid down for 
him his name to be put up. It is for him I say. 
{Sits upon a stone.) 



52 The Image 

Ho sty: Come now and make our settlement 
with no more delay. There being a statue to be 
put up in this place, and the whole fleet of guard- 
ians and councillors and members of Parliament 
wanting to get knowledge of the name we will put 
on it, who now is the most man to be respected, 
and to be done honour to, of all that ever came out 
of Ireland? What is your opinion now. Darby 
Costello, if you have any opinion at all? 

CosteUo: Don't be laying it on me now. I'm 
in dread I wouldn't find a name would be pleasant 
to every person, and that would give no offence 
in any place. Let you ask Mrs. Coppinger, that it 
is given in to to be the best singer in this place, 
and that has the praise of every man ever got 
praises in her songs. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It's easy say who is the best 
man. 

Costello: {With a sigh.) It is not easy, but hard. 
Mrs. Coppinger {sings) — 

*'His life and liberty he risked both here and 

everywhere. 
Both slander and prison he suffered his own 

share, 
I'm sure he loved all Ireland, 'tis admitted near 

and far 
He would have gained a fortune just at the 

Irish Bar!" 



The Image 53 

Costello: Good woman ! 
Ho sty: Rise it, ma'am, rise it ! 
Mrs. Coppinger: {Coming a step forward) — 
''The foes of Ireland, well 'tis known he often 
made them quail, 
With eloquence like thunder he defended Gran- 

uaile. 
You may talk of Wellington and the battles 

that he won. 
But in all that he deserved was nothing to what 
O'Connelldone!" 

Costello: Very good! That's the chat now! 
"But in all he deserved was nothing to what 
O'Connelldone!" 

Coppinger: He had a gift of sweetness on the 
tongue. Whatever cause he took in hand it was 
as good as gained. 

Ho sty: The best man within the walls of the 
world he was. He never led anyone astray. 

Mrs. Coppinger: What wonder in that, he 
being as he was the gift of God. Wasn't Ennis 
the best town in the thirty- two counties of Ireland, 
sending him to Parliament the time his own place 
had him put out ? 

Costello: (Sings.) "In the year '47 we laid 
him in Glasnevin." — I'm no songster like Mrs. 
Coppinger. 



54 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: To throw out the poison 
from his cup he did, the time there was death 
lurking in it. The English that put it within 
in it, because he was a pious man. I seen his 
picture in a book one time. I give you my word 
I kissed it there and then. 

Coppinger: His picture! No, but I that saw 
himself one time in Galway. I couldn't get anear 
him, all the nations of the world were gathered 
there to see him. 

Costello: Sure I seen him myself, it was the 
greatest thing ever I saw. He drove through the 
streets very plain, and an oiled cap on him, and 
he having but the one horse. 

Ho sty: No, but seven horses in his coach he 
had the day I saw him. They couldn't get in the 
eighth. 

Coppinger: Oh, it's a great image and a great 
monument I will shape out for him the dear 
man 

Costello: So you will ! And he having one hand 
resting on a post, and a paper having Repeal on it 
held up to his chest. 

Mrs. Coppinger: No, but Emancipation that 
should be on the paper. There is no other man 
that could be put beside him at all. 

Costello: That is settled now and well settled. 
That is a great satisfaction, there to be no quarrel- 



The Image 55 

ling or no argument. It is a very nice thing, Brian 
Hosty, you to be no way thorny or disagreeable, 
but content and satisfied to be putting up a monu- 
ment to a Munster man. 

Mrs. Coppinger: And what objection could 
he urge against a Munster man, and he being 
worthier and more honourable than any man 
of the other provinces of Ireland ? 

Hosty: I am not giving in to that. 

Costello: You are giving in to it, as is right 
for you to do. Every person seeing the image 
put up will know that you were of the one mind 
and the one opinion with ourselves, and you 
giving your voice for our man. 

Hosty: I to be as wise then as I am now, I 
would not have given in to you, or given you occa- 
sion to be running down my province, and giving 
the branch to your own. 

Mrs. Coppinger. And where would you find 
now any sort of a hero in Connacht would give 
satisfaction far and near, and have his name up 
as good as the men of Munster? Dan O'Connell, 
Smith O'Brien, Brian Boru, O'SuUivan Bere 

Hosty: Ah, we heard enough of that old 
string of heroes in the time that is past. They are 
all done away with now, and what is left of the 
best of them but a little fistful of bones? It's the 
champions of Connacht are battling yet. Let 



56 The Image 

the statue be put up to some living man and 
where is Munster ? 

Costello: What way would you put up a 
monument to a living man, and some traitors 
maybe turning against him in the latter end, and 
running him down? 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Coming over to Coppinger.) 
Do not put your hand, Thomas, to a likeness of 
any living man at all, and his neighbours to be 
coming and criticising it, saying it would not 
resemble his features or his face. 

Hosty: Dead or living I've no mind to give my 
voice for any man was bred in Munster. You're 
a proud piece, Mrs. Coppinger, and you think 
you have got the better of me, but if O'Connell 
himself did his work fair enough, there were some in 
your province didn ' t turn out too well the time Crom- 
well was on the road, and to the day of my death 
I will never put praises on one of their district. 
{Coppinger jumps up angrily.) 

Costello: {Stopping him.) Wait now till we'll 
think of some person would answer the two of 
ye — There is one was not from the west or 
from the south, that was Parnell. There are some 
say he was the best man ever lived. 

Coppinger: He was not, but O'Connell was 
the best, that wore his hat in the House of Com- 
mons what no man but the King can do. 



The Image 57 

Hosty: If Parnell didn't wear his hat in it, he 
fought a good fight in it. 

Coppinger: If it wasn't for O'Connell there 
would be no members in the English Parliament 
at all would be Catholics ! 

Hosty: If there wouldn't, there'd be no Catholic 
judges on the Bench, calling out for coercion and 
to do away with juries ! 

Costello: It's best for ye agree to Parnell. 
I'm told if he had held out and kept up, he would 
have got the second best match in England. 

Hosty: He did more than any other man I tell 
you, and he to have lived till now Ireland would 
be different to what it is. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Let you not agree to him, 
Coppinger. Sure I had his picture on the wall 
and I took it down after, the priest thinking it 
did not look well to be hanging where it was. 

Costello: Ah, they have but the one thing against 
him, and how do we know but that was a thing 
appointed by God? 

Malachi: (Suddenly coming between them.) Look 
now at the fighting and quarrelling and the slander- 
ing is sent among ye, the way ye will be made give 
in to my own choice man. If you didn't give in 
to him at the first, you'll be druv to give in to him 
secondly 1 A shining image of silver I will see put 



58 The Image 

up, and the words will be on it worked with red 
gold. 

Hosty: The devil bother you, Malachi, a poor 
foolish creature the like of you, to be interrupting 
our talk. 

Coppinger: Let you go in from under that 
moon that does be making your mind take a 
flight, till the worst thing you'll be saying you'll 
think it to be the best. 

Malachi: Let you not be belittling me!- I 
tell you I wouldn't give the weight of that little 
board in my hand, for all that's on the headland 
of Druim-na-cuan ! 

Coppinger: Pup, pup, Malachi, we have man- 
ners and were brought up to manners, and you 
have none. 

Malachi: I tell you there's three quarters of 
the world is not good enough to be drowned ! 

Coppinger: No, but there are some have a 
tongue as bad as Judas had a heart, and that is 
bad enough. 

Malachi: Keep your own tongue off me so! 
It is what you are a bully, and the captain of all 
the bullies! 

Mrs. Coppinger: What is ailing you? Be 
mannerly in your anger anyway. Yourself and 
your Hugh O'Lorrha, that was maybe some sort 



The Image 59 

of an idolater or a foreigner, that went breaking 
all the commandments ! 

Malachi: Whatever he was I'd go to the 
north side of hell for seven year for him! The 
whole fleet of ye together are not worth the small- 
est rib of his hair ! 

Hosty: In my opinion he was an innocent or 
a fool the same as yourself, or you would not be 
infatuated with him the way you are ! 
{All laugh.) 

Malachi: That will be a dear laugh to you! 
Is it defaming the character ye are of my darling 
man?. But I'll put terror on ye! I'll give you a 
clout will knock your head as solid as any stone 
in the wall! {Flourishes hoard.) 

Coppinger: Lay down that stick, you miser- 
able imp ! 

Malachi: I'll strike a blow with it will split 
bits off a rock. You big turkey gobbler you! 
Come on till I'll make a great scatter of you! 
{They close round him seizing board.) Death 
and destruction, but I'm as strong as you! {He 
falls in the scuffle.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: Is it to kill him you did ? 

Coppinger: Not a kill in the world, but the 
senses that is knocked out of him. 



6o The Image 

Hosty: If it wasn't that there is luck with a 
fool, he'd be done for. 

Mannion: {Coming in.) Let ye stand back 
now. What call had you to go charging at him, 
and bearing him to the ground? 

Costello: No, but himself that came rushing 
into handigrips with us, the same as horned 
cattle in a field. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It is bleeding in the head he 
is, with the sharpness of the stone he fell on ; there 
is not much happened him beyond that. 

Coppinger: It's best lay him in the hooker 
below is just making a start for Ballyvaughan. 
To leave him in the infirmary ere morning they 
can, till such time as he will come around. Try 
now can you rise up, Malachi. 

{He is helped up, and Mannion and Mrs. 
Coppinger lead him towards pier.) 

Malachi: {Calling out as he goes.) Time is a 
good story-teller ! Ye will do the business for me 
yet, till his name will be sung through the seven 
kingdoms! What is allotted cannot be blotted. It 
is for him I say — it is for him. {He is led off.) 

Costello: It is a pity he to have made that 
disturbance, and we being so pleasant and so 
peaceable together. 



The Image 6i 

Coppinger: We have time enough yet to make 
another choice. We didn't go through the 
saints of Ireland yet, or the seventeen kings of 
Burren. 

Ho sty: Where's tiie use of calHng it a choice, 
and I having two contrary men against me. Any 
time I will strive to get the goal for my own 
man, the two of ye will join to put me down. 

{Mrs. Coppinger and Mannion come hack.) 

Costello: It is a pity neighbours to be going 
contrary to one another. ''Let ye be at one," 
Biddy Early said, ''and ye will rule the world." 
It would be right to bring the whole case to a 
closure, and not to be hitting and striking and 
calling "Hi" for one, or "Hi" for another, the 
same as if it was a disputed election was in it. 

Mrs. Coppinger: I saw a very wicked election 
in Ennis one time, and I rising. That was before 
there came in the voting by ballot. 

Costello. You are a great woman for thoughts, 
Mrs. Coppinger, and that is a thought will settle 
all. What would ail us not to give our votes by 
ballot ? There would be no room then for disput- 
ing, the choice being over and made, fair and 
quiet, and without favour or intimidation. 

Coppinger: And where will you get ballot 
boxes and voting papers, and a courthouse, and 
two men sitting in it with themselves, and the 



62 The Image 

voters writing — if they can write — and shout- 
ing out if they cannot, the name of their own 
man? 

Costello: What signifies clerks, and papers? 
What do you say now to Peter Mannion? It is 
what we'll do, to come up to him and tell him 
secretly the name we have our mind made up to ; 
and he to tell out after who has the benefit of the 
votes. 

Mannion: {Coming forward.) Let ye all fall 
back so, and not to be putting ears on yourselves, 
but to draw anear me one by one. 

Coppinger: That's it, and you yourself to be 
standing stark and quiet, the same as the image 
vv^ill be standing there in the time to come, and 
we to go west as far as the rick of turf 

Mannion: {Standing stiffly .) Whatever cham- 
pion of the champions of Ireland ye think to be the 
most worthy and the most fitting to have his name 
put up, let ye tell it out here to me privately. And 
that being done, I will make my count, and tell 
out after who is it has gained the day. 

Coppinger: That's business now. And which 
now of the three of us is to be the first to give his 
own vote? 

Mrs. Coppinger: It is Peter Mannion is well 
able to settle that, and he being used to society, 
and the meetings at the union. 



The Image 63 

Mannion: Let ye come so according to the 
letters of your name — A, B, C, C, Coppinger 
— or Costello — Co Coppinger Co Costello, it 
isn't easy say which of the two of ye has to go 
first. 

Costello: Let it be Thomas so. I'd be someway 
shy and delicate to be called in at the start. 
Thomas the first, and I myself will follow after. 
{They all go out of sight. Mrs. Coppinger 
goes into house.) 

Mannion: Come on, so, Thomas Coppinger, 
and give out your vote, according to your opinion 
and your conscience and your choice. 

Coppinger: {Coming in and speaking to Man- 
nion confidentially with hand to mouth.) It is what 
I am thinking, Peter Mannion, there is truth in 
what herself was saying a while ago. It is a hard 
thing to be asked to go make a likeness of a man, 
and his appearance to be known before. And the 
people to be criticising, now they have got to be so 
crafty and so enlightened. But a man not to have 
his appearance known, you would have leave to 
put on him any shape that might be pleasing to 
yourself, or that would come handy, according as 
the stone would be slippery or be kind. Now every 
person knows, by pictures, or by seeing them, or by 
history from one to another, the features of Par- 
nell and of Daniel O'Connell 



64 The Image 

Mannion: Hurry on now. It is not sitting 
hearing a sermon in the chapel I am, and in dread 
of the Missioners to go sHp out from the door. 

Coppinger: Did ever you hear now any person 
to have seen a picture or a Hkeness of Malachi 
Naughton's man? 

Mannion: I cannot bring to mind that ever 
I did. 

Coppinger: I give my voice and my vote so 
for Hugh O'Lorrha. {Goes into his house.) 

Mannion: Come on now and draw near to me, 
Darby Costello. 

Costello: {Coming close to Mannion.) It is 
often I was saying, Peter Mannion, unfriendhness 
among neighbours to be a very awkward thing. 
I never would be asking to rise a dispute, or to 
bring any person into one at all. 

Mannion: Is it through the dark hours of 
the night you are wishful to keep me perishing 
in the air that is of the nature of frost and of 
sleet? 

Costello: {Seizing Us arm.) It's easy seen you 
are not living in this village, Peter Mannion, or 
within three fields of it. If I say Dan O'Connell, 
Brian Hosty will be making attacks on me, and if 
I say Parnell, Mrs. Coppinger will be picking at 
me and going on at me, and maybe putting up 
Thomas to be mis-spelling my name, and he print- 



The Image 65 

ing it on the head-piece he has me promised at the 
last 

Mannion: {Shaking him off.) I give you my 
word I'll leave you here and now, to be giving out 
your reasoning to the seals and to the gulls of the 
air. 

Costello: {Holding him,) It is impossible to say 
what men would be best, and good and bad being 
together in the whole of them. And all I would 
wish is the name of some man that never gave 
offence, and had ne'er an enemy worth while — and 
it's likely that would be the mountainy man's 
choice, Hugh O'Lorrha. 
'{He goes off.) 

Mannion: Come on now, Brian Hosty, and 
let me go out of this. 

Hosty: {Coming in.) There are some on this 
headland want to get the master hand — {Points 
towards Coppingefs door.) Himself and his fire- 
ball! 

Mannion: Hurry on now. 

Hosty: To give them too much of a scope, 
and not to give them a check, it would be impos- 
sible to live anear them. It would be worse they 
to be in power than Martin Luther. 

Mannion: Don't be delaying, but see can you 
agree with the two that are agreed at this time, 
s 



66 The Image 

Ho sty: They to have agreed, it is some plan 
they have made to get the mastery over myself 
and over Connacht. I never told a lie but two 
or three, and you may believe me saying, that 
if there were two hundred Dan O'Connells, and 
twenty thousand Mr. Parnells, and a sovereign 
in their hands for every vote I'd vote, I'd give 
it to none of them, but to a man I'm sure and 
certain sure Darby or Thomas, or his wife, never 
gave out a challenge for, and never blew the horn 
for, and that is the fool's man, Hugh O'Lorrha! 

Mannion: {Beckoning the others in.) Let ye 
draw near to me now. Come up here Mrs. Cop- 
pinger, till I'll count out the returns. By the opin- 
ion, and the judgment, of the three fairest men, 
and the three choice men of Druim-na-cuan, and 
they voting together the same as children of one 
house, without deceit or trickery, the image is to 
be reared on this headland is to stand for the hon- 
our and the memory and for the great name and 
the fame of Hugh O'Lorrha! 

All. Hugh O'Lorrha! 

{They raise their hands in astonish- 
ment, and look at one another. 



Curtain 



ACT III 

Scene: same as before. Four days later, mid-day. 
Mrs. Coppinger putting out chairs and a table 
and sweeping. Costello looking on. 

Costello: It is certain this will be a great meet- 
ing of people, and a grand white day for the head- 
land of Druim-na-cuan. I would want a slate and 
a pencil to count all I saw coming the road. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Isn't it a big hurry is on 
them, to ask to come laying the stone for the 
monument, and it never mentioned or thought of 
at all up to four days ago. 

Costello: Sure at that time the whales had the 
last puff hardly gone out of them. 

Mrs. Coppinger: What way are the whales 
presently? I thought to go see them but it failed 
me, and the neighbours from all parts drawing in 
for talk every whole minute. 

Costello: It was the one way with myself, I 
didn't get the time to draw anear them. It is what 
Thomas was saying, next Monday maybe, with the 
help of God, we'll go start drawing off the oil. 

67 



68 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Dusting a chair.) That now 
is all the chairs they can get. Sure they could not 
all expect to be seated, and they coming in their 
hundreds. There is not a west of Ireland man will 
not be in it. 

Costello: Indeed, ma'am, you have accommo- 
dated them very well with everything. It's well 
for them get a place to stand itself. From all I 
hear, and they congregated, it would fail you to 
put a pin between any two and two or any 
twelve and a dozen. Pressing to hear the 
speeches they will be. They are saying the 
Chairman of the Board to be a very solid 
speaker. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It's the member for North 
Munster is the best. Grand out and out he is, 
and has very tasteful drawn out talk. The re- 
porters themselves couldn't follow it or put the 
half of it down. 

Costello: (Looking out over wall.) Tents and 
booths they are setting up upon the strand. Glory 
be to God, it's like a theatre to be looking at them 
arriving. They were waiting for the turn of the 
spring-tide. You were craving sprees this long 
time, Mrs. Coppinger, and it is with pride you are 
apt to be spending this day. 

(Malachi comes in from left, his head tied up, 
and his arm.) 



The Image 69 

Mrs. Coppinger: And who now would be the 
first to come to the meeting but Malachi Naugh- 
ton! And indeed it is much like a ghost he is 
looking, that would knock a start out of you, or a 
shadow would be wandering through the world. 

Malachi: (Looking about on the ground.) It is 
there I left it down. I'm certain it is in that 
spot I left it out of my hand. 

Mrs. Coppinger: What way did they do a 
cure on you in the Workhouse, Malachi? Bet 
up I was fearing you were, and that it's hardly 
you would be eating this world's bread again. 

Malachi: Just battled it out I did — just battled 
it ' out — Did ye see in any place my bit of a 
board I used to have? 

Mrs. Coppinger. I did not see it, unless it 
might be thrust as kindling in under the turf on 
the hearth. 

Malachi: Isn't that a hard case now, my bit 
of a board to be robbed from me, and it after 
being brought to me over the ocean and all the 
dangers of the sea, and having on it the name you 
know. That to be swept away from me, I am 
penetrated and tossed. 

Mrs. Coppinger: You to burn the house down 
it's not likely you would find it. But you may 
quit fretting and breaking your heart, for if it 
is the name of Hugh O'Lorrha you are craving 



70 The Image 

to see, you will see it in a short while printed in 
clean letters beneath the soles of his feet, and his 
own image reared up in this spot all the same as 
life, in the shape will be put upon him by my own 
man, according to the pictures and the plan are to, 
come to us from Dublin on this day. 

Malachi: I heard that, I heard that. I knew 
well his name would be put up in spite of ye. 
But it's for the whole world that will be, and they 
coming from the east and from the west to do hon- 
our to him; and he might take it bad of me, I to 
go lose that little bit of a board. 

Mrs. Coppinger: You heard of all was doing 
so far away as the Workhouse Infirmary? Isn't 
it a great wonder now tidings to go out so speedy 
and so swift. 

Malachi: It was in every person's mouth ere 
last night, in the ward where I was screeching 
with the pain, and the doctors after taking the 
full of a bucket of badness out of my bones. As 
much blood nearly came away from me as would 
be in three men. But I rose up after hearing that 
news. 

Mrs. Coppinger: I wonder they to have let 
you out and the way you are, that you couldn't 
hardly put a rack through your hair. 

Malachi: {Sits on chair beside the table.) I 
asked no leave. I slipped out in the half dark at 



The Image 71 

the battling of the day with the night. The road 
to be seventeen times as long, I wouldn't feel it. 
I tell you I was that strong I could walk on water, 
my heart being light and airy the way it is with 
the thought of his name being put up and his 
image, that will be shining out as bright as stars 
on a frosty night, and all the whole country press- 
ing to look at it. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It isn't likely it is shining it 
will be, it would take marble would be rubbed 
for to shine, and the hardness of that would not 
serve Thomas's tools. And the colour of it 
wouldn't answer either, the spotted or the black. 
It.is likely he was a man having a white front to 
his shirt — I wonder now is it swarthy he was or 
red-haired? 

Malachi: It is I myself could give you know- 
ledge of that. 

Mrs. Coppinger: What way could you have 
knowledge, and he being dead ? 

Malachi: God be with the company that left 
me in the night time ! 

Mrs. Coppinger: Is it to see one belonging to 
him, or that had acquaintance with him you 
did? 

Malachi: I'd burst if I didn't tell it ! A cross- 
cut I was making that was eight strong miles 
across the mountain, and I was travelling down 



72 The Image 

a little avenue of stones by the forth that was 
all shining with the brightness of the night — ■ 
More people I saw in it than ever I saw at a 
hurling, and I'd ask no better sight than that in 
high Heaven. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Where now did all that 
company come from ? 

Malachi: More people than ever I saw in 
twenty fairs. And beyond that I saw twelve of 
the finest horses ever I saw, and riders on them 
racing around the forth. Many a race I saw 
since I lived in this world, but for tipping, and 
tugging, and welting the horses, never a race 
like that — and there was a rider of those riders 
without a twist in him — at the first there was like 
a fog about him 

Mrs. Coppinger: Ah, it is but visions of the 
night you are talking about; or your sight that 
spread on you. It was but the shadow of some 
soul you saw, or people that are out of this 
world. Or maybe it is dreaming you were, and 
you stepping out through your sleep. 

Malachi: {Getting up.) Take care but it was 
no dream ! Let you go out looking yourself so in 
the night time. And if you do go, it is likely 
you will see nothing but the flaggy rocks and the 
clefts, for it's not all are born to see things of the 
kind. I'll tell you no more, I wish I had tqld 



The Image 73 

you nothing, and I wish I didn't lose my Httle 
bit of a board! {Goes into Coppinger's house 
looking for it on the ground.) 

Coppinger: {Coming in.) Well, I have brought 
you tidings you will wonder at, and that will 
raise and comfort your heart ! 

Mrs. Coppinger: There is nothing would make 
me wonder after all happened in these days past. 
I to rise up in the morning under lofty rafters in 
Boston, I give you my word I'd take it as sim- 
ple as a chicken would be hatched out of the 
shell! 

Coppinger: {Sits on table.) Did ever you hear 
the' name of a Hosty or a Costello or my own 
name, that is as good as their own through the 
father, besides any flight it might take with the 
mother, to be put up on the papers with praises 
around and about them. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Why would they be put up 
on the papers with praises? I never heard of 
Brian or Darby no m_ore than yourself, ever to 
have been brought before the magistrates, or to 
have put his head inside a gaol ? 

Costello: Who was telling you? 

Coppinger: The Dispensary Doctor that 
stopped his side-car on the road, and the driver 
of the m-ail car, and he would tell no lie, and 
Morrissey is herding for Cunningham, and that 



74 The Image 

was bringing back a score of lambs from the 
market at Cloon. 

Mrs. Coppinger: And what account were they 
giving of what was on the papers? 

Coppinger: Three honourable men, the papers 
said we were, that showed respect where respect 
should be showed. A pattern and an example 
for all Ireland they said we were, the nut of the 
bunch, the flower of Druim-na-cuan and the 
clean wheat of the Gael ! 

Costello: Do you tell me so? 

Coppinger: And more than that again, the 
Board of Guardians gave out a great lacerating 
to all the rest of the Unions of the two provinces, 
where they had never stretched a hand to raise 
up the memory, or so much as to change the 
address on a street, to the great high up name of 
HughO'Lorrha! 

Mrs. Coppinger: That is very good. Believe 
me, there is not a Board or a Board Room 
west of the Shannon, but will have a comrade 
cry sent out between this and the Feast of 
Pentecost. 

Coppinger: I ask you, Mary, and I ask the 
two of you, did you often hear me saying I would 
surely get my chance? 



The Image 75 

Costello: I wonder now you to have courage 
to go think yourself fitted to make a figure of a 
champion all the world will be coming to see. 

Coppinger: I'm no way daunted or turning 
my back upon the work! I tell you if it was 
three statues was wanted, of the three sons of 
Usnach, or the three Manchester martyrs, or 
the three saints of Burren, MacDuagh, MacDara 
and Columcille, it's ready I'd be and greedy 
I'd be to set my hand to the work! 

Hosty: {Coming in with rolls of paper, going to 
seat outside Peggy's door.) I got the pictures 
from the Clerk of the Union where he sent for 
them to Dublin. Two able lads that drew them 
he was telling me, that have laid their mind to 
sketching as their trade. 

Coppinger: They should be very apt and very 
handy, making so little delay in putting down a 
thing of the kind. 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Opening one roll.) Wait now 
till we'll take a view of them before the meeting 
will gather about them. {Unrolls it and shows 
conventional design for statue of an orator.) 

Costello: That is very nice now and very 
good. 

Coppinger: {Feebly.) It wouldn't be an easy 
job now, any person to come around the like of 



76 The Image 

that. Wait till we'll see the comrade, is it any 
way more simple and more plain. 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Opens it.) It is mostly the 
same as the other, but for having on it a cloak in 
place of a coat. 

Coppinger: It's a queer thing, now, not to get 
a picture laid down by some skilled person would 
be used to going through stone, and not to be 
leaving it to the fancies of young pups of boys 
rising up. 

Hosty: It would be hard to beat it. Grand 
out and out it is. But sure the both of them 
are great. They were very smart surely to 
make a picture of the sort, without a button left 
out or a ha'porth. But it's you yourself, I am 
thinking, that is in dread it will fail you to carry 
through the job. 

Coppinger: I give you my word the one of 
them would be as light to me as what the other 
would be. I am asking no reprieve from the 
work. But the ancient monuments that were 
the best, such as you'd see in the Abbey beyond, 
where the hero didn't ask to be put upon his 
two feet, but was content to lie stretched the 
way you might be lying on a bed, and you not 
seeking sleep. 

Hosty: Shove over that box. Darby, and hold 
up the one of them — (Costello hangs one hack and 



The Image 77 

front from his neck and gets up on hex.) That now 
is the way it will be — And it is not yourself, 
Thomas, will have the choice to make this time. 
It is the Board itself will keep that in their hands. 

Costello: {Standing on box.) That is best, it 
would be a great load on us to have to do that 
part of the job. It is easy for themselves, that 
are used to be judging between contracts and 
tenders and the like. 

Hosty: It's not so easy as you think. 

Costello: I tell you they have good practice 
in their business, settling and pitching as they 
must between the choice and the cull. 

Hosty: One of the lads is nephew to the member 
for North Munster. 

Costello: Let them give him the proffer so. 

Hosty: By the two mothers, the second of the 
lads is first cousin to the Vice-Chairman of the 
Board. 

Costello: Let them choose the two of them so, 
and put them back to back — It might be settled 
into some sort of a groove that it could be shoved 
from side to side — {Turns slowly round on box.) 
It to revolve, there would be no aspersion. 

Mannion: {Coming in.) I was bid see is all 
ready for the big men are on the road, with their 
side-cars and with their band. 



78 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: Let them come now and 
welcome. We have all ready before them. The 
table, the chairs, the stone is to be made a hole for, 
and the pictures. 

Mannion: It is what I was bid to ask, is the writ- 
ing made out, is to be put at the butt of the statue ? 

Coppinger: The writing is it ? 

Mannion: That's it. The name and the date 
of Hugh O'Lorrha's birth, and the place he was 
reared, and the length of his years, and the deeds 
he has done. Write me out a docket now having 
that put down upon it clear and plain. 

Ho sty: Let Thomas Coppinger do that. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Why wouldn't he do it, and 
you yourself being illiterate and not able to put 
down your mind on paper? 

Hosty: I am not illiterate, but as well aware 
of things as yourself. But he that is used to be 
putting such things over the bones of the whole 
of the district, the pen should be light in his 
hand as is natural, and should be kind. 

Coppinger: Not at all, but every man that 
comes to be buried that gives me the years and 
the names. I have enough to do after, bringing 
them within their scope on the slab. It isn't 
easy keep them from running around the edges. 
Let Brian Hosty put it down himself. 



The Image 79 

Hosty: It never was my trade to be spilling 
out words on paper, the same as a poet or a clerk. 
It is Darby Costello has practice, where he was 
forced by the police to print his name and dwelling- 
place on the shaft of his ass-car, ere last year. 

Costello: Ah, let me alone, I'm in dread I might 
not do it in a way would satisfy all that are coming. 

Coppinger: Ah, what are you wanting to put 
down? His christened name we have, and the 
name of his family and his tribe, and that is 
more than was wrote down of some of the world's 
great men, such as Homer that spoke Greek and 
never wrote a lie. 

Mannion: It is likely that will not be enough. 
Reporters that were asking in the town, what 
place was Hugh O'Lorrha born. 

Coppinger: You should know that, Brian 
Hosty, where your memory has no burdens on it 
like my own. 

Hosty: I forget it as good as yourself. 

Mannion: Well, who is it has the whole 
account? Sure it must have been written down 
at some time, in a history or in a testament. 

Costello: Who would have it but Malachi 
Naughton? He'll remember us of it. 

Hosty: Come out here, Malachi, you're 
wanting. 



8o The Image 

Malachi: {Coming out of house.) What is it you 
are wanting of me ? 

Coppinger: Give out now, Malachi, if you can 
give it, the deeds and the greatness of the man is 
to be set up on a stone in this spot. 

Mannion: Ah, it is Hkely it is Httle he knows or 
can tell about him at all. 

Malachi: Why wouldn't I know about him, 
and I after seeing him with my two eyes ? 

Coppinger: Is it to see him you are saying 
you did? 

Malachi: Clear and plain I saw him in the 
night time. If I didn't why would my heart leap 
up with him the way it does ? 

Coppinger: Is it with yourself you were, seeing 
him? 

Malachi: I have no witnesses but the great 
God and myself. Crowds and crowds of people 
I saw. Men like jockeys that were racing — 
and one that was the leader of them, on a bayish 
horse — the sun and the moon never shone upon 
his like — eyes he had were more shining than our 
eyes, and as to comeliness, there was no more to be 
found. The champions of Greece, and to put all 
of them together, would not equal the flower of one 
drop of his strong blood. 



The Image 8i 

Coppinger: I'm thinking it is little satisfaction 
we will get questioning him, and his thoughts 
going as they do upon every queer track. Old 
he is, and it is all in his brain the things he does 
be talking of. 

Malachi: You have me tormented with your 
catechism, and you brought away my little bit 
of a board. Let you go ask Peggy Mahon, that 
knows all he went through better again than 
myself. 

Coppinger: Peggy Mahon to know him it is 
likely he was born in this district. She m.aybe 
got knowledge he would be some great man, picking 
it out of the stars. 

Mrs. Coppinger: No, but go, Peter Mannion 
and ask a loan of the Register that has all the 
names of the parish set down for maybe four 
score years or a hundred years back. 

Mannion: I won't be long getting it, supposing 
the clerk to be at hand. It isn't easy find 
him within. The dates not to be away and astray, 
it would be very handy to get some information 
from penmanship, besides dragging it as if from the 
depths and the bottom of a bog. (Goes.) 

Malachi: You would stand to look at him in 
a fair I say. Fair hair on him the colour of amber. 
Twelve handsome riders and he before them 
all 



82 The Image 

Costello: Sure we have the likeness of him here 
that was made to represent him the way he was 
thought to be, or that other great men of his 
sort would be in the habit of appearing. {Holds 
up picture.) 

Malachi: {Coming up eagerly close to picture , 
staring and falling hack.) The devil's welcome to 
you! Is it you is calling yourself Hugh O'Lorrha? 
My bitter curse upon you, how well you stole his 
name! {He hacks away from it.) 

Costello: If you had intellect to understand 
things of the sort you would not be running it 
down. It is away in Dublin that was made, 
and they should know. 

Malachi: I'll shave you without soap or 
razor! It's a skelp of a stone I would be well 
pleased to be giving you, and you laying claim 
to his name! That God may perish you! Is 
it for the like of you the sea was filled with wonders 
and with signs? 

Coppinger: Indeed it is not much the way it is 
put down on paper, but cutting will be a great 
addition to it, the time it will be shaped in stone. 

Malachi: A man that had seven colours in his 
eyes! That was for beauty and for strength 
beyond a hundred ! His name in lines of golden 
letters written on his own blue sword! A man 
could whip the world and that broke every gap ! — 



The Image 83 

Sure you have no action in you, no action at all, 
without liveliness, without a nod. The devil 
himself wouldn't take you or the like of you ! 

Costello: Well now, Malachi, haven't you the ter- 
rible scissors of a tongue ! He is well-looking enough 
if it wasn't he has some sort of a comical dress. 

Malachi: {Threatening picture, hut held hack hy 
Mrs. Coppinger.) Be off out of that you unnatural 
creature, or it is I will twist your mouth round 
to your poll! I'll blacken the teeth of you and 
whiten the eyes of you ! It is your brain I will be 
putting out through the windows of your head! 
If I had but a rod in my hand it's soon I would 
make you limber ! It is powder I will make of your 
bones and will turn them to fine ashes ! It is my- 
self is well able to tear you to flitters and to part 
your limbs asunder! Be going now before I'll 
break you in thirty halves. (Tries to rush at it, hut 
stumhles over hox.) To be putting such an appear- 
ance and such an insult on my darling man! The 
devil skelp the whole of ye ! My bitter curse upon 
the spot ye had planned out for to be putting up 
a thing the very spit of yourselves, and ugly out of 
measure ! (Kicks over hox.) 

Hosty (picking up hoard, which has heen hidden 
under it.) That is a bit of the Kerry men's green 
bordered boat, that was lost as was right, and they 
robbing our mackerel. 



84 The Image 

Mrs. Coppinger: I said that I heard the name 
of Hugh O'Lorrha in some place. It is what they 
were telHng me, that was the name on the boat. 

Malachi: {Snatching it.) Oh, my board, my 
little bit of a board! How well it failed them 
to hide from me what the waves of the sea could 
not keep from me ! 

Costello: No wonder you to be comforting 
yourself, Malachi, the way you won't be fearing 
at any time your brave hero to be but a deceit 
and a mockery. Sure he must be some big man 
his name to be printed on a board. 

Malachi: A deceit is it? I to think that, 
why would I be wearing his livery? It is what 
I am thinking, Darby Costello, you are a very 
liary man. {He puts board under his shirt.) Oh, 
my heart-secret, wait till I'll hide you from them 
all, and they not able to understand a thing they 
are not fit to understand! There's a bad class 
of people in this place, are not worthy to see so 
much as your name! I don't want to be annoyed 
with them any more than I am. I'll keep my 
knowledge to myself, between myself and the 
bare stones. I'll go back to the beasts and the 
birds that pay respect to him! 

Hosty: Do so, and it might chance you to see 
him again, and the full moon working in your 
head. 



The Image 85 

Malachi: {Turning back for a moment as he 
goes.) So I will see him again! I'm well able to 
track him through fire and fair water. And I'll 
know him when I will see him, and that is what you 
or the like of you will not do. And another thing. 
I tell you I'd sooner he not to be in it, than he 
to be in it, and to be what you are making him 
out to be! {Goes.) 

{Band heard in the distance.) 

Mannion: {Coming in.) Here now, I chanced 
the clerk leaving the door. Here is the Register so 
far as it goes back, and that is but after the year 
of the Famine. To go astray the old ones did or 
some ignorant person that made an end of them. 
You will find the name you are looking for in 
this 

Hosty: You will, the same time you will find 
a hundred goats without damage or roguery. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Is it that the clerk said there 
was in it the name of Hugh O'Lorrha? 

Mannion: He did, and he said besides that 

Hosty: A name to be down in the register, 
it did not get there by itself. I was getting to 
be in dread he might be some sort of a Jack o' 
Lanthorn. 

Coppinger: What way could he be that, and 
the country entirely calling their leagues and 
their hurling clubs by his name? It is not to a 



86 The Image 

Jack o' Lanthorn I myself would be working 
out a statue of stone. 

Mannion: If you will but listen till I'll tell 
you what the clerk was saying 

Hosty: Let you sound out now, Darby Costello, 
whatever may be written in the book. 

Costello: {Giving it to Mrs. Coppinger,) No, 
but Mrs. Coppinger. It would take her to do that ; 
she that can read out the paper the same as if 
God put it in her mind. 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Sitting down and opening 
first page.) Michael — Michael Morrissey — that's 
not it — where now was he born? — Bally- 
rabbitt — he should be father so to the 
Morrissey is herding for Cunningham. 

Hosty: Don't be going through the races and gen- 
erations now, or you never will make out the name. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Thomas Fahy, and after that 

Joseph Fahy and Peter Fahy well, they got 

enough of space in the book, that whole tribe 
of the Fahys. It is a book for themselves they 
have a right to be paying for, and not to be taking 
space that is for the whole of the parish. 

Hosty: Go on now, ma'am, go on. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Would you believe now here 
is more of the Fahys. Congregated on the page 
they are, the same as a flock of stairs. 



The Image 87 

Hosty: {Seizing hook and turning over pages to 
the end.) Make now a second reading — it's 
best begin at the finish till you'll get shut of 
them. There's a good deal of the Fahys wore 
away since that time. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It's hard to please you, Brian 
Hosty, and you so hasty as you are. Here now 
is the last name in the book if that will sat- 
isfy you. What is it? H, Hugh — What will 
you say now hearing, it is no less than Hugh 
O'Lorrha? 

Costello: The man we are looking for. 

Coppinger: {Looking over Mrs. Coppinger^s 
shoulder.) So it is too. Sound out the year now, 
Mary, and the day, the way I will space them in 
my mind. 

Mrs. Coppinger: May the tenth in this year — 
— the day ere yesterday no but yesterday 

Hosty: It is the year you are reading wrong. 
What way would a man be getting a monument, 
and he to be baptized within the last past two 
days. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Reckon it for yourself so, if 
ever you learned figures on a slate. 

Hosty: {Taking hook.) The year our own year 
— sure enough, unless there did clouds rise up in 
my head. 



88 The Image 

Mannion: It is what the clerk was saying, and 
you to give me leave to be telling it, there is. a 
man of the Fahys 

Mrs. Coppinger: Have done with your Fahys! 
Is it that you are saying Hugh O'Lorrha's name 
was ever EngHshed into Fahy? 

Mannion: A man of the Fahys that is living 
anear the forge gave his young son, that was 
baptized yesterday, the name of Hugh O'Lorrha, 
where he was hearing it belled out through the 
whole of the district. 

Mrs. Coppinger: I'm no way obliged to you, 
Peter Mannion, for keeping that close the way 
you did, and all the trouble I am after going to 
in the search. And what call had he to go tracking 
after names outside of his own generations and his 
tribe? 

Manmon: It is what the clerk was saying, a 
young weak little family he has, ten of them 
there are in it; and he has the names were in 
his family, or on the best of the Saints, mostly 
used previously. 

Hosty: And as to the real Hugh O'Lorrha, we 
are as wise as we were at the first. 

Coppinger: What are books and what are 
Registers put beside any person's mind? Come 
out here now, Peggy Mahon, and tell us what 
you can tell us, and what we are craving to know. 



The Image 89 

Hosty: You will get nothing at all out of that 

one, unless it might be cracked talk and foolishness. 

(Peggy comes out and they all crowd around 

her. She has a cat in her arms, and sits 

down on the seat outside her door.) 

Mrs. Coppinger: Tell us out now, Peggy, all 
you can tell, about one Hugh O'Lorrha. 

Peggy: I am not in humour for talking and for 
foolishness. The cat that has my tea destroyed, 
that's all the newses I have. To put his paw in 
it he did, that I should throw it out of the door. 
There is no person would drink water or any mortal 
thing and a cat after touching it, for cats is queer, 
cats are the queerest things on the face of the 
globe. 

Coppinger: Come on now, Peggy, till I'll ques- 
tion you. 

Peggy: The day I wouldn't get my drop of 
tea I could keep nothing at all in my mind. What 
call had he to go meddle with it? There is some- 
thing is not right in cats. 

Hosty: Where's the use of questioning her? 
Giddy she is with age, and it's impossible to keep 
a head on her. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Wait a second and I'll have 
her coaxed, bringing her out a cup of tea. {Goes 
into house.) 



90 The Image 

Coppinger: Tell us now, the same as you told 
Malachi Naughton, all that happened to Hugh 
O'Lorrha, and that gave him so great a name. 

Peggy: Hugh O'Lorrha — Hugh O'Lorrha that 
was all the name ever he had, and it will 
be his name ever and always. I heard that 
since I was remembering, since I had sense or 
head. 

Coppinger: I suppose now it could hardly be 
yourself, ma'am, befriended him, and he coming 
into the world? 

Peggy: Wasn't that a rogue of a cat now, to 
go dip his paw down into my tea? 

Mrs. Coppinger: {Coming out with cup of tea.) 
Here now, Peggy Mahon, drink a sup of this and 
it will give you nice courage for a while. 

Peggy: {Turning her shoulder to her.) What 
call had you to go saying my own man would not 
recognise me and I dead? And all the world 
knows that Him that ordered lights for the day 
and for the night time, has given out orders for 
all He will send for, to come before Him in 
their bloom. 

Coppinger: {Taking cup and offering it to her.) 
That is so surely. At thirty years of age and in 
their bloom. {Peggy drinks tea.) 



The Image 91 

Costello: She won't refuse after that to tell her 
story, and she knowing it to tell, about Hugh 
O'Lorrha. 

Peggy: I know it, and it's myself does know it. 
I have a grand little story about him. 

Coppinger: Out with it so, ma'am. 

Peggy: There was a widow-woman one time, 
and she is not in it now, and what signifies if 
she ever was in it at all^ 

Mrs. Coppinger: That has the sound nearly of 
the beginning of some ancient vanity. 

Coppinger: Have patience now, it is coming. 

Peggy: She had but one son only, and the 
name was on him was Hugh Beg O'Lorrha. 

Costello: My dearest life! I was thinking the 
same thing before. Sure that is a folk-tale my 
grandfather used to be telling in the years gone 
by. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Can you tell us now at what 
time did he live? 

Peggy: How would I know? I suppose at the 
time of the giants. He came in one day to his 
mother. *'Go boil a hen for me and bake a cake 
for me," says he, "till I'll travel as far as the Court 
and ask the King's daughter." 

Costello: I know it through and through. It 
is nothing at all but a story-teller's yarn. 



92 The Image 

Coppinger: Is that truth you are saying? 

Costello: To the best of my belief I am speaking 
the truth. I can tell it through to the binding. 
To take the life he did of the Naked Hangman, that 
was hid in the egg of a duck. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Why didn't you tell us before 
now, Darby Costello, that you knew Hugh 
O'Lorrha to be but a deception and an empty 
tale. 

Costello: I was someway shy and fearful to be 
going against the whole of ye. And sure when 
we had to believe it, we must believe it. 

Hosty: And is it only in the poets' stories he 
is, and nothing but a name upon the wind? What 
way did it fail you to know that, Thomas 
Coppinger, and that Malachi had put his own 
skin upon the story. 

Coppinger: I don't know from Adam's race, 
unless it was witchcraft and spells and oracles. 
How well it failed you to find it out yourself. 

Mrs. Coppinger: Sure he must have lived in 
some place, or why would we be putting up a 
monument to him? 

{Band and cars heard nearer.) 

Hosty: He lived in no other place but in the 
Munster poets' lies. It is great ridicule will be 
put on us now by all that are coming the road. 



The Image 93 

To jibe at us they will, we to be spending our 
means upon a man that never was in it at all. 

Coppinger: The thing that was to give me my 
chance to have brought me ruination in the 
end! Since the Gael was sold at Aughrim there 
never was such a defeat ! 

Costello: I'm in dread it's to do violence to us 
they might. There will always, be contrary 
people in a crowd. It is up to my neck in the 
tide I would wish to go, the way no person could 
come near me, or be making attacks on me. {All 
sit down disconsolately.) 

Pe^Zy- {Standing up and giving a delighted 
laughs) Ha, Ha! Ye are defeated, and ye earned 
defeat! Sure ye know nothing at all. This one 
running down the fool's man, saying he was made 
but out of thoughts and of fancies; and this one 
{Pointing to Mrs. Coppinger) running down my 
own man, saying he was of no use and of no 
account, and that he was not better, but worse, 
than any other one. 

Mrs. Coppinger: It was you told that to her. 
Darby Costello, for to make mischief between 
neighbours were at one. 

Costello: If I did it was to raise her heart and 
to pacify her, where she was fretting with the 
thought she would not come to him and she dead. 
But the time I'll go doing comfortable things 



94 The Image 

again, it's within in my own mind I'll go do them, 
the way I won't suffer in my skin. Such abuse to 
be getting ! I might as well be a renegade. 

Coppinger: Give no heed to them, Peggy, and 
I myself will carve a slab will do credit to your man, 
and will keep his name above ground for ever. 

Peggy: I will give you no leave to do that! 
I'll ask no headstone and his name upon it, and 
strangers maybe to be sounding it out with the 
queer crabbed talk they have, and the gibberish, 
and ridiculing it, and maybe making out my clean 
comrade, my comely Patrick, to be but a blemished 
little maneen, having a stuttering tongue. {She 
goes into cabin and turns at door,) A queer race 
ye are, a queer race. It is right Malachi was 
quitting you, and it was wise. Any person to own 
a heart secret, it is best for him hide it in the heart. 
Let the whole world draw near to question me, but 
I'll be wise this time. I'll say no word of Patrick 
Mahon, and no word of Hugh Beg O'Lorrha, that 
is maybe nearer to him than some that are walking 
this street. Oh yes, oh yes, I'll be wary this time 
and I'll be wise, very wise. I'll be as wise as the 
man that didn't tell his dream! {She goes into her 
house and shuts door.) 

Mannion: {Coming in.) Is it long now since 
any of ye went to the place the whales landed upon 
the strand? 



The image 95 

Hosty: It would be seventeen times better for 
themselves and ourselves, those beasts to have 
stopped browsing where they were, in their pen 
that is beneath the green ocean. 

Coppinger: Hadn't I enough to do planning 
out the figure and the foundation and the stone? 
I'd have the day lost visiting them. Monday 
morning with the help of God, I'll go take a 
view of them. 

Mannion: All the view you are apt to get, is of 
the seals spits lying on the strand, and of the 
waves and the wrackage of the sea. 

Coppinger: What are you raving about? 

Mannion: In the argument the whales went 
out from ye. 

Coppinger: They couldn't stir unknownst to 
us. What way could they walk, having no legs? 

Mannion: The Connemara lads have the oil 
drawn from the one of them, and the other one 
was swept away with the spring tide. 

Costello: For pity's sake! That cannot be 
true! 

Mannion: It is true, too true to be put in the 
ballads. 

Hosty: It is no mean blow to the place losing 
them; and to yourself, Thomas Coppinger, and 
your grand statue swept away along with them. 



96 The Image 

Costello: Let you not fret, Thomas. There 
did no badness of misfortune ever come upon 
Ireland but someone was the better of it. You 
not to go shape the image, there is no person can 
say, it is to mis-shape it you did. Let you comfort 
yourself this time, for it is likely you would have 
failed doing the job. 

Coppinger: I was thinking that myself. Darby. 
I to begin I'd have to follow it up, and the deer 
knows where might it leave me. 

Mrs. Coppinger: We'll not be scarce of talk 
for the rest of our years anyway. For some do 
be telling the story was always in it, but we will 
be telling the story never was in it before and 
never will be in it at all ! 

{The hand is heard quite close playing 
''O'Donell Ahuf' Mrs, Coppinger 
rushes in at door, looks out. Coppinger 
hides behind headstone. Hosty leaps 
the wall into Connacht. Costello hides 
at side of Peggy's house. Only Peter 
Mannion left in centre. Band quite 
close and shouts of Hi! for Hugh 
O'Lorrha!) 



Curtain 



NOTES WRITTEN FOR FIRST EDITION, 

1910 

To A Certain Editor — ''When the 'Image' was 
produced at the Abbey, I put on the programme a 
quotation, 'Secretum meum Mihi,' 'My Secret to 
Myself,' which I had for a while thought of taking 
as its name. I think from a note in your paper you 
and some others believed that the secret I wanted to 
keep was my own, whereas I had but given a 'heart- 
secret' into the keeping of each of the persons of the 
play. 

"One of the old stories known in the cottages is 
of a beautiful lady loved by a king's son, who follows 
her to a garden where they loved and are happy. 
She has laid on him one condition only: 'You must 
never wonder at me, or say anything about me at all.' 
But one day she passed by him in the garden, and when 
he saw her so beautiful, he turned and said to the 
gardener: 'There was never a lady so beautiful as 
mine in the whole world.' 'There never was,' said 
the gardener, 'and you will be without her now,' he 
said. And so it happened, and he lost her from that 
day because he had put his thought about her into 
common words. 

"So it fell out with my old people. Brian Hosty's 
* Image * was iiis native, passionately loved province 
7 97 



9^ The Image 

of Connacht; but he boasted of it to some who could 
see its thorns and thistles with passionless eyes, looking 
over the mering wall. Mrs. Coppinger had her mind 
set upon America as a place where the joy of life would 
reach its summit, but that hope is clouded by the 
derision of one who has been there, and seen but 
the ugliness about him. Costello thought of an earth 
all peace, but when he spoke of peace 'they made 
themselves ready to war.' Thomas Coppinger dreamed 
of the great monument he would make to some great 
man, and old Peggy of one made beautiful through 
long memory and death; and Malachi of one who was 
beyond and above earthly life. And each of these 
images crumbled at the touch of reality, like a wick 
that has escaped the flame, and is touched by common 
air. And the more ecstatic the vision the more 
impossible its realisation until that time when, after 
the shadows of earth, the seer shall 'awake and be 
satisfied.' 

"You are certainly proud of what your paper has 
done to bring back respect for the work of Irish hands. 
But I wonder if it is all you intended it to be when you 
wrote in a little book I edited ten years ago of a 'new 
Ireland rising up out of the foundations of the old, 
with love and not hate as its inspiration?' For you 
also have been an Image-maker. The Directors of 
our Theatre are beginning to get some applause, even 
in Dublin, for its success, but only they know how far 
it still is from the idea with which they set out. And 
so with my sisters' sons, to whom I have dedicated 
this play. One brought together the Conference 
that did so much towards the peaceable and friendly 



The Image 99 

changing of land ownership. The other has made 
DubHn the Orient of all — artists or learners or critics, 
who value the great modern school of French painting. 
Yet I fancy it was a dream beyond possible realisation 
that gave each of them the hard patience needed by 
those who build, and the courage needed by the 
'Disturber' who does not often escape some knocks 
and buff e tings. But if the dreamer had never tried 
to tell the dream that had come across him, even 
though to 'betray his secret to the multitude' must 
shatter his own perfect vision, the world would grow 
clogged and dull with the weight of flesh and of clay. 
And so we must say 'God love you' to the Image- 
makers, for do we not live by the shining of those 
scattered fragments of their dream ? 

"I do not know if I should have written this 
'apology' at the first playing of 'the Image, '.or if 
I ought to leave it unwritten now. For after all, 
those enjoy it most who say in what I think is your 
own formula — 'this is what Lady Gregory calls a 
comedy, but everybody else calls a farce. ' " 



I owe an acknowledgment as well as many thanks 
to A. E., who gave me the use of an idea that had 
come to him for a play, which he had no thought of 
carrying out. It was about a man who collected 
money in a country town for a monument to one 
Michael M' Car thy Ward, I forget on what grounds. 
The money is collected, the collector disappears, and 
then only it is found that Michael M'Carthy Ward 
had never existed at all. I meant to carry this out 



100 The Image 

in the manner of ** Spreading the News" or "The 
Jackdaw," but the "Image" took the matter into its 
own hands, and whether for good or ill-luck, the 
three-act play has grown. I think I have not quite 
failed, yet it also is not what I set out to do. 



It was after the play had been written that an old 
man strolling out from Gort one Sunday talked of 
O'Connell. "There is a nice monument put up to 
him in Ennis," he said. "In a corner it is of the 
middle of the street, and himself high up on it, holding 
a book. It was a poor shoemaker set that going. I 
saw him in Gort one time; a coat of O'Connell's he 
had that he chanced in some place. Only for him 
there would be no monument; it was he gathered 
money for it, and there was none would refuse him." 
And still later, this spring, I went to see the Hill of 
Tara, and I was told that the statue of Saint Patrick 
on it "was made by a mason — a common mason. If 
it wasn't that he had made it, and had it ready, and 
was a poor man, it would not have been put up." So 
the ambitions of Malachi Naughton and Thomas 
Coppinger have not been without ancestry. 



HANRAHAN'S OATH 



lOI 



Mary Gillis . 
Margaret Rooney 
Owen Hanrahan 

COEY 

Mrs. Coey 
Michael Feeney 



A Lodging-house Keeper. 

Her Friend, 

A Wandering Poet. 

A Ragged Man. 

His Wife. 

A Poteen-maker. 



102 



HANRAHAN'S OATH 

Time: Before the Famine. 

Scene: A wild and rocky place. Door to left of a 
stone cabin that was once the bed of a Saint, 

Mary Gillis: {Coming from right.) Did you 
get any tidings of him, Margy? 

Margaret Rooney: All I heard was he was seen 
going over the scalp of the hill at daybreak. 

Mary Gillis: Bad cess to him! Why wouldn't 
he stop in the house last night beyond any other 
night ? 

Margaret Rooney: You know well it was going 
to the preaching of that strange friar put disturb- 
ance in his mind. 

Mary Gillis: Take care is he listening to him 
yet. 

Margaret Rooney: He is not. I went in the 
archway of the chapel and took a view. The 
missioner is in it yet, giving out masses and bene- 
dictions and rosaries and every whole thing. But 

103 



104 Hanrahan's Oath 

as to Owen Hanrahan, there was no sign of him 
in it at all. 

Mary Gillis: It is to the drink houses I went 
searching for him. 

Margaret Rooney: He was never greatly given 
to drink. 

- Mary Gillis: If he isn't, he is given to company 
and he'd talk down all Ireland. 

Margaret Rooney: So he is a terror for telling 
stories, and it is yourself made your own profit 
by it. It is his gift of talk brought the harvesters 
that would live and die with him, to your house 
this five weeks past. 

Mary Gillis: Yourself that is begrudging me 
that, where you want to keep him to yourself. 

Margaret Rooney: So I would keep him, I to 
find him. I wouldn't wish him to go travelling. 
He had his enough of hardship. There is no great 
stay in him. 

Mary Gillis: There are but the two roads for 
him to travel from the scalp, over and hither. He 
to come this way, believe me I'll bring him back to 
the town. 

Margaret Rooney: He wouldn't go with you. 

Mary Gillis: I have a word will bring him, 
never fear. 

Margaret Rooney: What word is that ? 



Hanrahan's Oath 105 

Mary Gillis: What was it he was giving out to 
the two of us ere yesterday, the time he came back 
after having drink taken at the sailor's wake? 

Margaret Rooney: I don't keep in mind what 
he said. 

Mary Gillis: You maybe remember the story ne 
gave us of one Feeney that he was with at a moun- 
tain still, and that made an assault on a gauger. 

Margaret Rooney: Feeney was the name, sure 
enough — •, but what signifies that ? 

Mary Gillis: I'll make a spancel from that 
story will bring him into hiding in the Borough. 

Margaret Rooney: You might not. It's little 
you know the twists of a poet's mind. He to have 
the fit of wandering, it is round the wide world he 
might go. 

Mary Gillis: Hurry on now, let you go the 
lower road and see will you bring him any better 
than myself. {Pushes her.) — Go on now, he might 
pass and go on unknownst to you ! 

Margaret Rooney: I'll not be three minutes 
going down the hill. {Goes.) 

Mary Gillis: {Sitting down.) That you may! 
It's the hither road he is coming. 

Hanrahan: {Coming in, his head bent down.) 
Isn't it a terrible place we are living in and terrible 
the wickedness of the whole world ! 



io6 Hanrahan's Oath 

Mary Gillis: What is it ails you, Owen 
Hanrahan? 

Hanrahan: People to be breaking all the laws 
of God and giving no heed to the beyond ! 

Mary Gillis: It is likely the preaching of the 
friar put those thoughts athrough your head. 

Hanrahan: Murders and robberies and lust and 
neglecting the mass ! 

Mary Gillis: Ah, come along home with me to 
the dinner. You are fasting this good while back. 

Hanrahan: What way can people be thinking 
of gluttony, and the terrors of the grave before 
them. 

Mary Gillis: Come on now to the little house, 
and the drop of drink will put such thoughts from 
your mind. 

Hanrahan: Drink ! That was another of them ! 
Seven deadly sins in all ! 

Mary Gillis: What call has a poet the like of 
you to go listening to a missioner stringing talk? 
You, that is so handy at it yourself. 

Hanrahan: A lovely saint he was! He came 
from foreign. To let fall a drop of scalding water 
on your foot would be bad, he said, or to lay your 
hand on a hot coal on the floor ; but to die with any 
big sin on your soul ; it will be burning for ever and 
ever, and that burning will be worse than any 



Hanrahan s Oath 107 

burning upon earth. To say that he did, rising up 
his hand. The great fear he put on me was of 
eternity. Oh, he was a darUng man ! 

Mary Gillis: Ah, that is the way that class to 
be beckoning flames at the people, or what way 
would they get their living? Come along now 
where you will have company and funning. 

Hanrahan: Leave touching me! I have no 
mind to be put away from my holy thoughts. 
Three big mastiffs, their red gullets open and burn- 
ing the same as three wax candles ! 

Mary Gillis: Come along, I tell you, to the 
comforts of the town. 

Hanrahan: Get away, you hag, before I'll lay a 
hand on you ! 

Mary Gillis: After the good treatment I gave 
you this five weeks past, beyond any lodger was in 
the house ! 

Hanrahan: Be off, or I'll do you some injury ! 

Mary Gillis: It's kind for you do an injury on 
me, the same as you did on the man that was sent 
bef jie the judge ! 

Hanrahan: Who was that ? 

Mary Gillis: Feeney that stuck down the 
gauger. 

Hanrahan: Anyone didn't see who did it — He 
was brought before no judge! 



io8 Hanrahan's Oath 

Mary Gillis: You didn't know he was taken 
and charged and brought to the Tuam Assizes ? 

Hanrahan: They could have no proof against 
him. It was a dark cloudy night. 

Mary Gillis: That is what they are saying. It 
was in no fair way it was made known who did it. 

Hanrahan: Ah what did he do but put up his 
fist this way . . . and the gauger was standing 
where you are supposing . . . and there was a 
naggin in poor Feeney's hand {Stoops for a stone) — 
and there lit a stroke on him {Strikes as if at her) — 
It's hard say was it that knocked him or was it the 
Almighty God. 

Mary Gillis: There is another thing the people 
are saying. 

Hanrahan: What is that ? 

Mary Gillis: They are saying there was another 
man along with Feeney at the bog-still. 

Hanrahan: What harm if they are saying that ? 

Mary Gillis: It will be well for that man not to 
be rambling the countryside, but to stop here in the 
shelter of the town where it is not known. It is 
likely his name is given out through the baronies 
of Galway and to the merings of County Mayo. 

Hanrahan: Little I care they to know I was in 
it. What could they lay to my charge? 



Hanrahan's Oath 109 

Mary Gillis: You had drink taken. You have 
no recollection what you said in the spree-house in 
Monivea. It is the name of an informer you have 
gained in those districts, where you gave out the 
account of Feeney's deed, in the hearing of spies 
and of Government men. 

Hanrahan: That cannot be so! An informer! 
That would be a terrible story ! 

Mary Gillis: A poor case they are saying, you 
to be roaming the country free, and Feeney under 
chains through your fault. 

Hanrahan: An informer! I'll go give myself 
up in his place ! I'll swear it was I did it ! Maybe 
I did too. ' I am certain I hit him a kick that 
loosed the patch on my shoe. {Holds foot up). 
I'll go set Feeney free. 

Mary Gillis: You cannot do that. He is gone 
to his punishment, where he was convicted of 
assault and attempt to kill. 

Hanrahan: In earnest? 

Mary Gillis: It is much he escaped the death 
of the rope. It is to send him to transportation 
they did. 

Hanrahan: The Lord save us! 

Mary Gillis: Sent out in the ship with thieves 
and vagabonds to Australia or Van Dieman's 



no Hanrahan's Oath 

Land, to be yoked in traces along with blacks 
driving a plough for the over-Government. 

Hanrahan: Transported and judged! It is a 
bad story for me that judgment is! And it to be 
brought about through me giving out too much 
talk! 

Mary Gillis: Ah come along and get a needleful 
of porter and well have a good evening in the 
town. 

Hanrahan: There will be no good evening or 
good morrow come to me for ever ! Let me run to 
take his place in the ship and in the chains. 

Mary Gillis: Sure it sailed away yesterday. 
It is ploughing his way across the green ocean 
Michael Feeney should be at this hour. 

Hanrahan: I'll go to judgment all the same! 
They'll send me out after him and set him free ! 

Mary Gillis: Not a fear of them, and they hav- 
ing him in their hand. And it's likely anyway 
the ship might go down in some storm. 

Hanrahan: To have sent a man to his chastise- 
ment through chattering! That is not of the 
nature of friendship. That is surely one of the 
seven deadly sins I 

Mary Gillis: Sure there is nothing standing 
to you only your share of talk. 

Hanrahan: It is that was my ruin! It would 



Hanrahan's Oath m 

be better for me be born without it, the same as a 
blessed sheep ! It is the sin of the tongue is surely 
the blackest of all! A man that died with drink 
in him, the missioner was saying, the soul would 
sooner stop in torment a thousand years than 
come back to the body that made it so unclean. 
And surely my soul would think it worse again 
to be coming under the sway of a tongue that had 
it steered to the mouth of the burning mountain, 
that is said to be the door of hell ! 

Mary Gillis: Ah, it is your own talk had always 
pleasantness in it — come on now — the people love 
to see you travelling through the town. 

Hanrahan: It is the tongue that does be giving 
out lies and spreading false reports and putting 
reproach upon a neighbour, till a character that 
was as white as lime will turn to be black as 
coal! 

Mary Gillis: No, but good words yourself does 
be putting out. Whoever you praised was well 
praised. 

Hanrahan: A cross word in this house, and a 
quarrel out of it in the next house, and fighting in 
the streets from that again, till the whole world 
wide is at war. The man that would make a gad 
for the tongue would be put far beyond Alexander 
that laid one around all the kingdoms of the 
world ! 



112 Hanrahan's Oath 

Mary Gillis: It is the roads would be lonesome 
without the sound of your own songs. 

Hanrahan: To make silence in the roads for 
ever would be a better task than was ever done by 
Orpheus, and he playing harpstrings to the flocks ! 

Mary Gillis: It is not yourself could keep 
silence in the world, without you would be a 
ghost. 

Hanrahan: My poor Feeney! He that wore 
out the night making still-whiskey would put 
courage into armies of men, and the hares of the 
mountain gathered around him looking on. I 
could cry down my eyes, he to be at this time in the 
black hole of a vessel you couldn't hardly go into 
head and heels, among rats and every class of 
ravenous thing ! Have you ere a knife about you 
or a sword or a dagger, that you'll give it to me to 
do my penance, till I'll cut the tongue out from my 
head and bury it under the hill ? 

Mary Gillis: Ah, come along and do your pen- 
ance the same as any other one, saying a rosary 
alongside your bed. 

Hanrahan: I'll go no more into the room with 
lodgers and strangers and dancers and youngsters 
enjoying music. I will wear out my time in this 
cabin of a saint, shedding tears unknownst to 
the world, hearing no word and speaking no word 
will be putting my repentance astray. There is 



Hanrahan's Oath 113 

great safety in silence! It will cut off the world 
and all of sins at the one stroke. 

Mary Gillis: It is not yourself could keep from 
the talk without you would be dumb. 

Hanrahan: So I will be dumb and live in dumb- 1 
ness, if I have my mind laid to it ! I will make an 
oath with myself. {Puts up hands.) By the red 
heat of anger and by the hard strength of the wind 
I will speak no word to any living person through 
the length of a year and a day ! I will earn Feeney 's 
pardon doing that ! I'll be praying for him on all 
my beads ! ^ 

Mary Gillis: Ah, before the year is out he will 
have his escape made, or maybe have done some 
crime will earn him punishment, whether or no, 
without any blame upon yourself. It will fail you 
to stop in this wilderness. You were always fond 
of life. 

Hanrahan: {Sitting down and taking off boots.) 
Bring away my shoes to some safe place to the end 
of my penance, that I will not be tempted to break 
away! Mind them well till the time I will be 
wanting them again. 

Mary Gillis: It is a big fool you are and a 
cracked thief and a blockhead and a headstrong 
ignorant man I 

8 



114 Hanrahan's Oath 

Hanrahan: I am not in this place for wrastling ! 
It is good back-answers I could give you, if it 
wasn't that I am dumb ! 

MaryGillis: I'm in no dread of your answers! 
I'd put curses out of my own mouth as quick as 
another the time I would be vexed ! 

Hanrahan: Get out now of this! The devil 
himself couldn't do his repentance with the noise 
and the chat of you ! {Threatens her.) 

Mary Gillis: Whisper now, one thing only and 
I'll go. 
Hanrahan: Hurry on so, and say what is it. 

Mary Gillis: What place did you put the keg of 
still-whiskey you were saying you brought away 
at the time Feeney ran, the gauger being stretched 
on the bog? 

Hanrahan: What way can I whisper it, and I 
under an oath to be dumb ! 

Mary Gillis: Is it in the bog you hid it? Or 
within a ditch or a drain. Let you beckon your 
hand at me, the time I'll give out the right place, 
and you'll not break your promise and your oath. 
Under a dung-heap maybe . . . Let you make 
now some sign . . . 

Hanrahan: {Seizing stick and rushing at her.) 
Sign is it ? Here's signs for you ! My grief that I 
cannot break my oath ! 



Hanrahans Oath 115 

Mary Gillis: {Who has rushed off looking hack.) 
Your oath is it ? You may believe me telling you, 
it will fail you for one day only to keep a gad upon 
your tongue! {Goes.) 

{Hanrahan shakes fist at her and sits down. 

Rocks himself and moans. 
A ragged man with a sack of seaweed comes 
in and looks at him timidly?) 

Coey: Fine day! {Hanrahan takes no notice?) 
Fine day! {Louder?) Fine day, the Lord be 
praised! . . . {Hanrahan scowls.) What is on 
you? FINE DAY! Is it deaf you are . . . Is 
it maybe after taking drink you are ? To put your 
head down in the spring well below would maybe 
serve you.. {Hanrahan shakes head indignantly.) 
Is it that you are after being bet ? A puck on the 
poll is apt to put confusion in the mind. {Another 
indignant shake.) Tell me out now, what is on you 
or what happened you at all ? 

{Hanrahan gets up. Makes same dumb show 
as he did to Mary Gillis, stoops, picks up 
stone, rushes as if to threaten Coey.) 

Coey: The Lord be between us and harm ! It 
is surely a wild man is in it! {He throws down 
basket and rushes off right.) 

Hanrahan: Ah, what is it ails you? That you 
may never be better this side of Christmas . . . 
What am I doing ? Is it speaking in spite of myself 



ii6 Hanrahans Oath 

I am? What at all can I do! I to speak, I am 
breaking my oath; and I not to speak, I have the 
world terrified. (Sits down dejectedly, then starts.) 
What is that? A thorn that ran into me ... a 
whitethorn bush. ... It is Heaven put it in my 
way. There is no sin or no harm to be talking 
with a bush, that is a fashion among poets. Oh, 
my little bush, it is a saint I am out and out! 
It is a man without blame I will be from this 
time ! To go through the whole gamut of the heat 
and of the frost with no person to be annoying 
me till I get a fit of talk and be letting out wicked 
words, that is surely the road will reach to Para- 
dise. It is a right plan I made and a right penance 
I put on myself. As I converse now with yourself, 
the same as with a living person, so every living 
person I may hold talk with, and my penance 
ended, I will think them to be as harmless as a little 
whitethorn bush. It is a holy life I will follow, and 
not to be annoyed with the humans of the world 
that do be prattling and prating, carrying mischief 
here and there, lavish in tale-bearing and talk! 
It is a great sin from God Almighty to be bally- 
ragging and drawing scandal on one another, 
rising quarrels and rows! I declare to honest 
goodness the coneys and the hares are ahead of 
most Christians on the road to heaven, where they 
have not the power to curse and damn, or to do 
mischief through flatteries and chatterings and 



Hanrahan s Oath 1 1 7 

coaxings and jestings and jokings and riddles and 
fables and fancies and vanities, and backbitings 
and mockeries and mumblings and grumblings 
and treacheries and false reports ! It is free I am 
now from the screechings and vain jabberings of 
the world, in this holy quiet place that is all one 
nearly with the blessed silence of heaven! {He 
takes up his heads.) 

{Coey and Mrs. Coey come on and look at him 
from behind.) 

Coey: A wild man I tell you he is, wild and shy. 

Mrs. Coey: Wording a prayer he would seem to 
be, letting deep sighs out of himself. A wild man 
would be apt to be a pagan or an unbeliever. 

Coey: I tell you he rose up and made a plunge 
at me and rose a stone over my poll. If it wasn't 
for getting the bag I left after me, I wouldn't go 
anear him. It's a good thought I had taking out 
of it the two shillings I got for the winkles I sold 
from the strand, and giving them into your own 
charge. . . . Take care would he turn and make 
a run at me ! 

Mrs. Coey: He is no wild man, but a spoiled 
priest or a crazed saint or some thing of the 
sort. 

Coey: Striving to put curses on me he was, but 
it failed him to bring them out. It might be that 



ii8 Hanrahan's Oath 

he was born a dummy into the world, and drivel- 
ling from his birth out. 

(Hanrahan listens.) 

Mrs. Coey: Would you say now would he be 
Cassidy Baun, the troubled Friar, that the love of 
a woman put astray in his wits? 

Coey: A half -fool I would say him to be. But 
it might be that he has a pain in the jaw or a tooth 
that would want to be drawn. Or is it that the 
tongue was cut from him by some person had a 
cause against him. 

(Hanrahan turns indignantly and puts tongue 
out.) 

Mrs. Coey: He is not maimed or ailing. It is 
long I was coveting to see such a one that would 
have power to show miracles and wonders, or to do 
cures with a gospel, or put away the wildfire with 
herbs. 

Coey: Let him show a miracle or do something 
out of the way, and I'll believe it. 

Mrs. Coey: If he does, it is to myself he will 
show it. I am the most one is worthy. 

Coey: Have a care. He is about to turn 
around. 

Mrs. Coey: (Sitting down.) Let me put a decent 
appearance on myself before he will take notice of 
me. (Begins putting on the pair of hoots Hanra- 



Hanrahan's Oath 119 

han had given to Mary Gillis' charge^ and which 
she takes from under her shawl.) 

Coey: A pair of shoes! What way did they 
come into your hand ? 

Mrs. Coey: It is that I found them on the 
road. . . . 

Coey: They are belonging so to some person 
will come looking for them. 

Mrs. Coey: They are not but to myself they 
belong ... it is that they were sent to me by 
messenger. 

Coey: And who would bestow you shoes, you 
that never put a shoe or a boot on you and the 
snow three feet on the ground, and you after going 
barefoot through the frost of two score of years ! 

Mrs. Coey: There's plenty to bestow them to 

me. Haven't I a first cousin went harvesting out 

in England where there is maybe shovels full of gold. 

(Hanrahan comes across quickly, seizes boots 

angrily and takes them away, shaking his 

fists at her.) 

Coey: (Retreating.) There is coming on him a 
fit of frenzy ! Run now, Let you run ! 
(Hanrahan seizes and shakes her.) 

Mrs. Coey: (On her knees.) Oh leave your 
hand off of me, blessed father! I'll confess all! 
Oh it is a miracle is after being worked on me! 



120 Hanrahan's Oath 

(Another shake.) A miracle to put shame on me 
where I told a lie, may God forgive me ! on the head 
of the boots ! 

Coey: I was thinking it was lying you were. 

Mrs, Coey: How well he knew it, the dear and 
the holy man! He that can read the hidden 
thoughts of my heart the same as if written on my 
brow! 

Coey: Is it to steal them you did? 

Mrs. Coey: (To Hanrahan.) Do not look at me 
so terrible wicked, and I'll make my confession 
the same as if it was the Bishop was in it ! 

Coey: Is it that I am wedded with a thief and a 
robber ! 

Mrs. Coey: I am not a thief, but to tell a lie 
I did, laying down that I got them from my first 
cousin, where I bought them from a woman going 
the road. 

Coey: That's another lie, where would you get 
the money? 

Mrs. Coey: Your own two shillings I gave for 
them that you put in my care a while ago. Take 
the shoes, holy saint, for I'll lay no hand on them 
any more. There never was the like of it of a start 
ever taken out of me. 

Coey: You asked a miracle and you got a mir- 
acle you'll not forget from this day. (Takes off 



Hanrahan's Oath 121 

hat.) I'll never go against such things from this 
out. . A good saint he is, by hell ! 

{Margaret Rooney comes on, Hanrahan 

catching sight of her flings down hoots 

and crouches behind hush.) 

Margaret Rooney: Did you see anyone passing 
this side? 

Coey: Not a one. 

Margaret Rooney: I am in search of a friend I 
have, that is gone travelling the road. 

Mrs. Coey: There is not a one in this place but 
the blessed saint is saying out prayers abroad under 
the bush. 

Margaret Rooney: I knew no saint in this place. 
What sort is he? 

Coey: You would say him to be a man that 
has not a great deal of talk. 

Mrs. Coey: He is a great saint ; he is so saintly 
as that there couldn't be saintlier than what he is. 
He is living in the wilderness on nuts and the 
berries of the bush, and his two jaws being bloomy 
all the time. 

Coey: He to be known, the people will come 
drawing from this to Dublin till he will have them 
around him in throngs. 

Margaret Rooney: {Seizing hoots.) What way 
did you get those shoes ? 



122 Hanrahan's Oath 

Coey: It was the saint threw them there in 
that place. 

Margaret Rooney: What happened the man 
that owned them? 

Mrs. Coey: {Pointing to hush.) Sorra one 
of me knows. Go crave to the saint under the 
bush to give out knowledge of that. It's himself 
should be well able to do it. He beckoned the 
hand at me a while ago and told me all that ever 
I did. 

Margaret Rooney: {Goes to hack of hush hut 
Hanrahan moves round from her.) I ask your 
pardon father, but will you tell me what happened 
the man I am in search of and what way did his 
shoes come to this place ? I am certain he would 
not part them unless he would be plundered and 
robbed. Tell me where can I find him. 

Mrs. Coey: Do not be annoying him now. It 
is likely he is holding talk with heaven. 

Margaret Rooney: {To Coey.) It is maybe you 
yourself took the shoes. 

Coey: Let you stop putting a stain on my char- 
acter. I that never put a farthing astray on 
anyone ! 

Margaret Rooney: What at all can I do to know 
is he living or dead. Or is he gone walking the 
round world barefoot ! 



Hanrahan's Oath 123 

Mrs. Coey: Hurry on and get news from that 
man is under the bush, before there might angels 
come would give him a horn and rise him through 
the sky ! 

Margaret Rooney: Saint or no saint, I'll drag 
an answer out of him ! 

{She goes to him, he moves away from her 
round bush. She takes hold of his 
shoulders.) 

Coey: Ah, there will thunder fall on her ! 

{Hanrahan tries to escape hut Margaret 
Rooney holds him and looks at his face.) 

Margaret Rooney: Is it you, Owen, is in it ! Oh 
what is it happened at all ! 

Coey: Will you hearken to her speaking to him 
as if he was some common man. 

Margaret Rooney: Tell me now what parted 
you from your shoes and are you sound and well ? 
. . . Answer me now. ... I think you very 
dark not speaking to me. It would be no great 
load on you to say, *'God bless you"! {He keeps 
moving on, she holding and following him.) Is it 
your spirit I am looking on, or your ghost ? 

Mrs. Coey: Look at how he will not let his eye 
rest upon a woman, the holy man ! 

Margaret Rooney: Get him to speak one word 
to me and you will earn my blessing! . . . Do 



124 Hanrahan's Oath 

you not recognise me, Owen, and I standing in 
the pure daylight! . . . Don't now be making 
strange, but stretch over to the road to be chatting 
and talking like you used. . . . 

Coey: He has lost the talk, I am telling you. 
It is but by signs he makes things known. 

Mrs. Coey: It is that the people of this district 
are not worthy to hear his voice. 

Margaret Rooney: Is it that you went wild and 
mad, finding the place so lonesome? What at all 
but that would cause you to go dumb ? 

Mrs. Coey: Have some shame on you. Can't 
you see he is not acquainted with you at all? 

Margaret Rooney: Did there some disease fall 
upon you, or some sickness? Why wouldn't you 
come back with me, and I would tend you and find 
you a cure ? . . . Let you answer me back, if it is 
but to spit at me! Is it that I vexed you in any 
way, and the stocking I mended with kind worsted 
covering your foot yet ? . . . (He draws it back.) 
Is it to break my heart, you will? ... Is it to 
put ridicule on me, and to be making a mockery 
of me you are? Letting on to be dumb! (He 
weeps.) 1 had great love for him and I thought 
he had love for me. (She turns away. He is 
stretching out his arms to her when Mary GilUs comes 
on. Hanrahan breaks away, making a grab at boots, 
he sits down to put them on, making a face at her.) 



Hanrahan s Oath 125 

Is that yourself, Mary Gillis ? It is in the nick of 
time you are come. 

Mrs. Coey: (To Mary Gillis.) Give me back 
now the two shillings I paid you for that pair of 
shoes. 

Margaret Rooney: Will you draw down on these 
fools of the world that this is no saint, but Owen 
Hanrahan ? 

Mrs. Coey: No, but she is under delusions! 
A man from God he is ! Miracles he can do, and 
he living, and at the time he'll be dead there is 
apt to be great virtue in his bones. 

Margaret Rooney: Tell them, can't you, that 
he is Owen Hanrahan? 

Mary Gillis: (Puts arms akimbo.) And what 
is it makes you say this to be Owen Hanrahan? 

Margaret Rooney: Are you gone cracked along 
with them? 

Coey and Mrs, Coey: That's the chat ! That's 
the chat! 

Mary Gillis: There will a judgment come on 
you, Margy Rooney, for putting on a holy Chris- 
tian, is dwelling in the blessed bed of a saint, 
the name of a vagabond heathen poet does be 
filling the long roads with his follies and his 
lies! 

(Hanrahan scowls at her.) 



126 Hanrahan s Oath 

Coey: That's right! That's right! A great 
shame the name of this holy friar to be mixed with 
any sinful person at all. 

Margaret Rooney: Is it the whole world has 
gone raging wild? 

Mary Gillis: Hanrahan the poet is it? God 
bless your health! That is a man should not be 
spoken of in this saintly place. He is the great- 
est schemer ever God created ! There is no beat 
to him! Putting lies on his own father and 
mother in Cappaghtagle ! Let^ting his father be 
buried from the poorhouse that was gaoled for 
sheepstealing ! Sure that one would hang the 
Pope! 

{Hanrahan makes faces at her again.) 

Margaret Rooney: Give over now cutting him 
down! {Tries to put hand over her mouth.) 

Mary Gillis: {Freeing herself.) It is not dumb 
I am myself, the Lord be praised, the same as this 
holy man. And I say, if you must put a name on 
him, let it be the name of some poet worth while, 
such as Carolan or Virgil or Sweeney from Conne- 
mara. It is Sweeney that is great! {Margaret 
Rooney tries to stop her, hut she backs and goes on.) 
It is himself can string words through the night- 
time. But as to poor Owen Hanrahan, it is in- 



Hanrahan's Oath 127 

human songs he makes. Unnatural they are, 
without mirth or loveHness or joy or delight. 

(Hanrahan writhes with anguish and makes 
threatening signs.) 
You'd laugh your life out, listening to the way 
he was put down one time by Sweeney, the 
Connemara boy ! 

{Hanrahan throws himself down and bites 
the grass.) 

Margaret Rooney: If you are Hanrahan, let you 
put her down under a poet's ctn-se. And if you are 
a saint, let you make a grasshopper of her with the 
power of a saint ! 

Mary Gillis: It is bawneen flannel and clean, 
that dumb friar is wearing ; but as to Owen Han- 
rahan, it is a stirabout poet he is, and greasy his 
coat is, with all the leavings he brings away 
from him and he begging his dinner from door to 
door. 

{Hanrahan gets up and rushes at her. She 

shrieks and runs right. She knocks 

against Feeney who is coming on. 

Hanrahan stops short and goes quickly 

into cabin.) 

Feeney: Mind yourself, woman! You all to 
had me knocked, barging and fighting and raising 
rings around you! I'll make you ask my pardon 
so sure as my name is Feeney ! 



128 Hanrahan's Oath 

MaryGillis: Michael Feeney is it? {He nods.) 

Margaret Rooney: What is it brings you here? 

Feeney: This is a place if you'd go astray, you'd 
go astray very quick in it. Crosscutting over the 
mountain I was, till I'd face back to my own place 
near Tuam. And I got word there is a friar from 
foreign here in some place, giving out preachings 
and absolutions. 

Mrs. Coey: No, but a holy man that is in the 
cabin beyond. A great saint he is, out and 
out! 

Feeney: That'll serve me as well, where I 
missed attending mass this fortnight back, where I 
was ... travelling ... In very backward 
places, I was. It is home I am facing now, and 
I'd sooner give out my confession to a stranger 
than to our own priest, might be questioning me 
where is my little mountain still, he being a Father 
Matthew man, that wouldn't so much as drink 
water out of a glass but from a teacup. 

Coey: You did well coming to himself that can 
put no question to you at all. 

Mrs. Coey: My grief that he cannot word out a 
rosary or give us newses of the fallen angels, being 
dumb and bereft of speech. 

Feeney: That will suit me well, so long as his 
ears are not closed, and that he can get me free 



Hanrahan's Oath 129 

from going to confession for another quarter of a 
year on this side of St. Martin's Day. 
{He kneels at door.) 

Margaret Rooney: (Trying to move him away.) 
Do not be pushing on him where he might be in a 
sleep or a slumber. 

Mrs. Coey: (Awed.) It is maybe away in a 
trance he might be, and the angels coming around 
him. It is in that way his miracles and wonders 
come to him. 

Coey: {Getting behind him.) Mind yourself. 
He might likely burst demented out from his trance 
and destroy the world with one twist of the 
hand. 

Mrs. Coey: He is bended now, holy father. Be 
so liberal as to reach your hand for the good of his 
soul. 

Mary Gillis: It would maybe be right, the 
whole of us to go in and see is there a weakness 
come upon him with his fast. 

{A hand is hurriedly stretched out.) 

Feeney: {Having knelt a moment shouts:) What 
is that I see! I recognise that yellow patch! 
Owen Hanrahan's boot! {Jumps up and drags.) 
Come out now, out of that ! 

Margaret Rooney: Let you leave dragging him ! 
{Tries to stop him.) 



130 Hanrahan's Oath 

Feeney: (Dragging him out with a loud laugh.) 
Is it yourself, Owen Hanrahan, is setting up to be 
no less than a saint ? Is it for sport or for gain you 
are working miracles and giving out benedictions? 

Hanrahan: Is it not transported you are ! 

Feeney: Why should I be transported, without 
you would be wishful of it ? 

Hanrahan: Taken and judged and sent out to 
Van Dieman's Land! 

Feeney: It is seemingly well pleased you would 
be, I to be there, and my neck in the hemp along 
with it. 

Hanrahan: Is that the thanks you are giving 
me, for doing penance under dumbness, on the 
head of you being gaoled in a ship! 

Feeney: Little you'd care, I to linger my life 
out on a treadmill or withering in a cell ! 

Hanrahan: Don't I tell you I am working out 
my repentance with the dint of my grief, where it 
was through my talk you were made a prisoner, 
and brought to the Court, and led away under 
chains, and blacks maybe beating you with whips. 

Feeney: What are you raving about, making 
me out a rogue and putting that stain on my name, 
I that never stood in a court, or a dock, or was 
brought away in a ship, or ever rattled a chain, or 
put my head upon a block ! 



Hanrahan's Oath 131 

Hanrahan: Having the name of an informer 
put on me for your sake ! 

Feeney: Is it that you are after being an 
informer? Giving out to the world the hidden 
bog-hole where I have my still ! 

Hanrahan: I did not ! 

Feeney: And you lurking in a cleft and letting 
on to be wording your beads! But I'll knock 
satisfaction out of you. I'll have you baulked ! 

Hanrahan: It is likely the gauger gave it out! 

Feeney: He wouldn't put the people against him 
saying that. A neighbour made me out and told 
me he swore he disremembered all that happened. 
Death and destruction on me, but he's a more 
honourable man than yourself ! 

Margaret Rooney: What have you against one 
another so ? 

Feeney: Blessed if I know. 

Hanrahan: If I haven't anything against him, 
there are others I have it against. {To Mary 
Gillis.) Let you be ashamed and under grief, 
for the way you have us made fools of. It is up 
here in this cabin yourself has a right to stop for 
the centuries earning my forgiveness to the end of 
your life, sleeping in your pelt and scraping your 
bare feet on the rock, like myself was doing, and 
speechless, and without defence, the same as I was 



132 Hanrahan's Oath 

myself, through the story you made up and the 
lies! 

Margaret Rooney: That's the chat, Owen! 
That is yourself is come back to us ! 

Mrs. Coey: Well now, for a saint of silence 
hasn't he a terrible deal of talk? 

Mary Gillis: As savage as a wasp out of a 
bottle he is ! His talk is seven times sharper than 
before, and a holy terror to the whole world. I'll 
go call to the true friar at the Chapel to say are you 
not bound to silence for a year and a day by your 
oath! 

Hanrahan: (Putting arm round Margaret 
Rooney and shaking fist at Mary Gillis as he takes up 
his coat.) You will, will you? Well I am not 
bound! How would I know, the time I took the 
oath in my lone, there would be schemers coming 
around me challenging and annoying me? It is 
yourself that broke the bond, following after me! 
And you have a great wrong done to me. The 
next time I will take an oath of silence it is in the 
market square I will take it, the night before 
the spring fair, and the pigs squealing from every 
paling and every car, and hawkers bawling, sooner 
than to be narrowed up on a crag where I cannot 
make my escape from the tongue of a woman that 
is more lasting than the sole of my shoe! It's bad 
behaviour you showed, with your lies, and a great 



Hanrahan's Oath 133 

shame for you, and you being a widow and ad- 
vanced out a while. It's a great wonder the Lord 
to stand the villainy is in you! I'll make you go 
easy! The time you rose me out of my senses, 
tearing av/ay my character, and I being dumb, I 
had myself promised I would make a world's 
wonder of you in the bye and bye, and my year 
and a day being passed! You disgrace, you! 
The curse of my heart on you! Go on now, you 
withered sloe bush, you cranky crab fish, you hag, 
you rap, you vagabond ! May your day not thrive 
v/ith you, and that you may be seven hundred 
times Grosser this time next year, and it is good 
curses I'll be making, and the first I'll put on you 
is the curse of dumbness, for that is the last curse 
of all! 



NOTE TO HANRAHAN'S OATH 

I think it was seeing a performance of * * The Dumb 
Wife " in New York, and having a memory of Molidre's 
Lucinde, that made me wonder how it would fare with 
a man forced to be silent in the same way. I do not 
count Jonson's Epicoene, for he had been with much 
labour trained for the part. So Hanrahan, poet and 
talker, borrowed from Mr. Yeats' ''Celtic Twilight," 
took the sudden plunge into silence. 

I have looked back into an old copybook where I 
began the writing, and I see that Mary Gillis was at 
the first given more of the argument, and told him that 
"To speak lets the bad blood out of you, the same as 
to vomit, and leaves the soul clean"; and "it is worse 
to have bad thoughts than bad words, and to be curs- 
ing and damning in the mind." And I see also I had 
written for my own guidance that "it is after reaching 
the height of sanctity the fall is greatest " ; and "how 
far the carrying out comes short of the imagining!" 
And this last I found true in the writing of the play, 
as Hanrahan did in the keeping of his vow. 



134 



SHANWALLA 



135 



Lawrence Scarry . . . . A Stableman. 
Hubert Darcy .... His Master. 

Bride Scarry His Wife. 

Owen Conary A Blind Beggar. 

Pat O'Malley 
James Brogan 
1st Girl 
2ND Girl 
Head Constable 
1ST Policeman 
2ND Policeman 
A Boy 



136 



SHANWALLA 

ACT I 

An old harness room, with bridles etc. Conary is 
sitti7tg at fire, has just finished a meal and is 
putting down mug and plate, awkwardly. 
Bride Scarry is sitting on table, working at 
bodice of a dress. 

Conary: ■ Many is the place where you stretched 
out your hand to me, Bride Scarry; over the 
mering in Clare the time you had a harbour with 
the Brogans that were of your kin ; and after that 
when you shifted over to Pat O'Malley that was of 
your kin; and after that again when you took 
service in the big house of the Darcys. And any- 
thing you would bring to me, if it was but a potato 
itself I would be sure of it, and I had no need to go 
sniffing the same as a yard dog to know was the bit 
sweet or stinking, wholesome or harmful, was 
thrust into the hand of the man is blind and de- 
feated in the sight. Another thing, I am well 
pleased with the meal you gave me this day, 
knowing it to be your own, and you free from 

137 



138 Shanwalla 

service and this fortnight back the woman of 
Lawrence Scarry's house, and having your own 
handling and your way. 

Bride: Was it not a great kindness he 
did, Owen Conary, taking me for his wife, and 
I having nothing in my hand and not so much 
as good friends would be a back to him. I'm 
in dread it is no good helper I can be to him at 
all. 

Conary: He is well off getting you ; for you are 
one that was born at sunrise and at the birthday 
of the year. But it is yourself and myself were 
under near the one misfortune up to this, I being a 
beggar and poor that must strive to please all and 
to humour them, trying to knock out the bite I'd 
eat ; and you being a girl under orders in whatever 
house you were in, and having no leave to please 
yourself at any time, and not knowing in the 
moon of May what roof might be giving you shelter 
in the moon of the badgers. 

Bride: That was so indeed, and I should be well 
content. 

Conary: A man to care you, and he an honest 
boy in favour with his master, and plenty to have 
come into your hand, there is little left now for 
you to covet or desire. 

Bride: It's hard say. I do be thinking at some 
times if I owned some grandeur such as a flock of 



Shanwalla i39 

hens, or a flower garden, it would make me more 
settled in the world. But having them maybe I 
might be craving after something would be better 
again. {Laughs^) 

Canary: That was the way with myself in my 
early time. I used to be hungering and hoping to 
see so much as one human face before I'd die. 
But since I went so far I am satisfied to wait till 
the walls of this world will be broke for me, and I 
will get a view of them that have lost the body and 
are upon the other side. 

Bride: You to see such things at this time itself 
it would be natural, for those that are blind should 
see more than such as have their earthly sight. 
They do be' saying one of Mr. Darcy's old fathers 
does be seen around this place, as it is here he kept 
his horses and his hounds. 

Conary: So he might be seen. A great rider he 
was, sitting up straight on his white horse that had 
the name of some castle out in foreign, in Germany 
I think it is, Iron Brightside, Many a one has 
seen him galloping through the demesne in the 
night time, and the huntsman with him in his red 
jacket riding. 

Bride: There is Larry would not give in to 
such things. But surely the priests know there 
are ghosts, and tell you they are poor souls that 
died in trouble. 



HO Shanwalla 

Conary: The shadow that wanders for a while 
until it has the debts paid it had to pay. And 
when it is free it puts out wings and flies to heaven. 

Bride: There was a woman from the North 
used to be telling me that every time you see a 
tree shaking there is a ghost in it. 

Conary: When one goes that has a weight on 
the soul that is more than the weight of the body, 
it cannot get away, but stays wandering till some 
one has courage to question it. 

Bride: That is what the woman told me. To 
have courage to question them you must, or they 
will have no power for to speak. 

Conary: I knew one Kearney met a woman, a 
stranger. **Is there anything I can do for you?'* 
says he, for he thought she was some country- 
woman gone astray. ''There is," says she. And 
she told him of some small debts she had left 
unknown to her friends, not more than ten shilHngs 
in all, and when she died no more had been said 
about it. So her friends paid these and said 
masses, and shortly after she appeared to him 
again. " God bless you now, " she said, "for what 
you did for me, for now I am at peace." But if 
Kearney did not question her, she would not have 
power to tell what ailed her. And it is certain that 
a mother will come back to care the child that is 
left after her. 



Shanwalla 141 

Bride: I never saw my mother that was taken 
at the very hour of my birth. 

Conary: It is Hkely she had a hand in you ; for 
a child that gets help from the other side will 
grow to be the best in the world. 

Bride: They must surely be uneasy about 
those they left after them, or why would they quit 
for one minute only that good place where they 
are gone. 

Conary: Coming back to give help, that is 
what they do be doing. Believe me, if it is good to 
have friends among the living, it is seven times 
better to have them among the dead. 

Bride: Whist now! Larry will say no one will 
be talking of such things unless it might be a 
woman or a fool ! 

Scarry: {Coming in.) Is that you Owen Con- 
ary keeping the woman of the house in talk? 

Conary: {Changing manner.) Myself it is, 
Lawrence Scarry! Calling to mind I was the 
grandeurs of this place in the long ago, the time 
the Darcys' hounds would be putting a fox in 
trouble! {Sings.) 

Hark, hark, the sounds increase 
Each horn sounds a bass 
Away to Chevy Chase 
Poor Reynard is in view; 



142 Shanwalla 

All round the sunny lake 
Lough Cutra then he takes 
But they without mistake 
His footsteps did pursue. 
'Twas on Ballyturn hill 
Poor Reynard made his will . . . 

Scarry: Stop your noise now and get out of 
sight. I saw the Master coming and he crossing 
the bridge! 

Bride: Come with me Owen till I'll lead you to 
where there is a warm wad of straw in the shed 
beyond. You can rest yourself there for a while. 
You might miss your step if I brought you up the 
ladder into the loft. 
{They go out.) 

Scarry: That's it, put him out of sight in some 

place. {He takes hit and stirrups and rubs them 

with a chamois leather, humming as if grooming a 

horse.) i 

I 
Darcy: {At door.) Are you/there Larry? 

Scarry: I am, sir. ) 

Darcy: {Coming in.) What way is the horse 
today? 

Scarry: Grand, sir. Grand out and out. 

Darcy: I'd be here sooner but for having to 
attend the Bench in Cloon. Magistrates are 
scarce these times. 



Shanwalla i43 

Scarry: There's good daylight yet. You can 
take a view of him. 

Darcy: {Going to side and opening door comes 
hack J shutting it.) He doesn't look too bad. 

Scarry: Is that all you have to say? He's 
altogether a beauty ! 

Darcy: Oh, Larry, do you think can he win in 
the race? 

Scarry: He to fail I'll give you leave to do your 
choice thing on me. 

Darcy: There will be good horses against him. 

Scarry: There's a good breed in him. Never 
fear he'll best them. 
Darcy: That dealer in Limerick owns a bay mare 
has a great name. 

Scarry: You may bet your estate on Shanwalla. 

Darcy: That mare won all before her at 
Turloghmore. 

Scarry: Shanwalla that will get the victory 
over all Ireland. 

Darcy: You are likely making too much of him. 

Scarry: There's no one can go stronger than 
him, and you to be trotting him itself; and as 
gentle as that you could bridle him with the ashes 
of a spent thread of silk. 

Darcy: It would frighten you to see the leaps 
they are putting up on the course. 



144 Shanwalla 

Scarry: There isn't a leap in any part would 
baulk him. 

Darcy: It will be a fierce race, a fierce pace. 

Scarry: 111 pity them that will make their 
start with Shanwalla! They to try and catch 
him, he'll take the cracked strain, and away with 
him. 

Darcy: He to win I'll have my pocket well 
filled. And believe me, you'll be no loser. 

Scarry: It's time indeed you to do some good 
thing for me, and I wedded and joined with a wife. 

Darcy: It wasn't I that bade you take a wife. 

Scarry: It was you put me stopping in this bare 
barrack of a deserted old kennel, till I near died 
with the lonesome. 

Darcy: Well you have company now, what- 
ever complaints she may put out of her. 

Scarry: The time she was a poor serving girl in 
your own kitchen she was better treated than to be 
housed under rafters in a loft. 

Darcy: A loft is an airy place. 

Scarry: A loft the crows wouldn't stop in, but 
to be going in and out of it with the breeze. 

Darcy: It to be airy you will not be stopping in 
it wasting your time of a morning. 

Scarry: It is gone to rack too. It was made 
since God made the world. It's as old as Adam. 



Shanwalla i45 

There's a great traffic in it of rats, till they have it 
holed like a sieve. 

Darcy: Holes are very handy for you to be 
looking down into the manger to see is Shanwalla 
eating his feed. 

Scarry: And no way to go up in it but only a 
ricketty ladder does be shaking like a bough in a 
big wind. 

Darcy: That is great good. It will keep you 
sober more than if you gave your oath to the 
missioners. You would be in dread to go face it 
and you after taking a drop. 

Scarry: I tell you I wouldn't care if I had to 
climb a rope to the skies if it wasn't for my woman 
of a wife. 

Darcy: I'm not too well pleased with you Larry 
for bringing in a companion till after the race 
would be won. Take care would she be chattering 
about the horse. 

Scarry: You need be in no dread. Wise head 
and shut mouth. That's the way with her. 

Darcy: I wouldn't wish her to be bringing 
company around the place. 

Scarry: No fear of her coveting to ask any per- 
son to come see the poor way she is lodged. 

Darcy: That's a good reason to keep you down. 
I have no mind anyone to come peeping and prying, 



14^ Shan walla 

striving to see him and to give out a report of 
him. 

Scarry: There is no one will get any sight of 
him till such time as he will come sparkling on to 
the course, and he tossing his head, like as if you 
were pitching buttons. 

Darcy: Take care would you let anyone come 
next or near him. 

Scarry: I know my business better than that. 

Darcy: Give no one leave to touch or to handle 
him. It is a little thing would put a horse astray. 

Scarry: Ah, horses in this country is a hardy 
class. They wouldn't die through swallowing a 
buttercup the same as they do out in France. 

Darcy: It's impossible to be too careful. 

Scarry: It wasn't myself lamed the chestnut, 
leaping on to the road, that the sinews spread on 
him. 

Darcy: It's not of making leaps I am afraid. 
There are other things might lame him such as a 
thorn in the knee. 

Scarry: He got no thorns under my care. 

Darcy: A hayseed in the eye might bring blind- 
ness on him. 

Scarry: It might, and my own eyes being blind. 

Darcy: A prick of a nail. 

Scarry: He's done with shoeing for this time. 



Shanwalla 147 

Darcy: A pinch of some poison in the drinking 
water. 

Scarry: Without they'd poison the whole river 
it would fail them to bring that about. 

Darcy: I tell you I'll be easier in my mind 
when next Friday will be passed. 

Scarry: So you would be too. It's best not 
praise or dispraise a crop before the June will be 
out. 

Darcy: I am wakeful fearing for him in the 
night time. 

Scarry: I wonder you wouldn't shift him over 
to your own yard and you being so uneasy. 

Darcy: 1 wouldn't say but it might be best. 

Scarry: Do it so, and I'll get my sound sleep. 

Darcy: He might get cold in the new stable. 

Scarry: Let him wear his blanket. 

Darcy: Sure enough, there's no eye like the 
master's. 

Scarry: I often heard you say that. 

Darcy: It's hard trust anyone. 

Scarry: Please yourself. 

Darcy: It might not be worth while for the 
short time till the race. 

Scarry: This is Tuesday. There's three days 
to it yet. 



148 Shanwalla 

Darcy: Wait till I'll take another look at him. 

Scarry: Look here now Master Hubert. You'll 
bring him out of this tonight or I myself will go 
out of it. 

Darcy: What are you talking about? 

Scarry: I will not stop in charge of him, and I 

not to be trusted. 

Darcy: Who said you were not trusted? 

Scarry: You said it now. 

Darcy: I did not. 

Scarry: I say that you did. 

Darcy: That's a big lie. 

Scarry: Your own is bigger again. 

Darcy: That's no way to speak to me. 

Scarry: I'll put up with it no longer. 

Darcy: All right so. You can go tomorrow. 

Scarry: I'll go here and now. 

Darcy. You cannot till tomorrow. I have no 
one to care the horse tonight. 

Scarry: Where is the trainer you had engaged? 

Darcy: That's nothing to you. You have to 
keep charge till morning. 

Scarry: Let him earn the big money he is paid. 

Darcy: Youknow well he is gone this fortnight. 

Scarry: Let you send and call him back. 

Darcy: He is gone for good and all. 



Shanwalla i49 

Scarry: My share of trouble with him! It's 
little we'll cry after him, myself and Shanwalla. 

Darcy: Go your own road tomorrow but you 
cannot quit my service till then. 

Scarry: If I do stop it is not to oblige you 
Mr. Darcy, but because I have a great regard for 
that horse. 

Darcy: All right! We'll say good-bye to one 
another in the morning. I've stood enough of you 
and of your tongue! {Goes.) 

Scarry: Ah, my joy go with you! {Sings 
ostentatiously:) 

The lands he did forsake, and swam across the 

" lake ' 
But to his great mistake the hounds kept him in 

view. 
Our County Gal way joy 
Is Persse of Castleboy . . . 

{Brogan and O'Malley come in.) 

O'Malley: Fine evening, Lawrence. 

Scarry: Is that you Pat O'Malley?. Is it up 
from Limerick you are after coming, James Brogan? 

Brogan: Going on to the fair of Loughrea I 
am, where I have business with a dealer from 
Cappaghtagle. 

O'Malley: We just called in to see what way 
yourself and Bride agree together. It is what 



150 Shanwalla 

they were telling me, your life is like marriage 
bells. 

Brogan: We were waiting beyond behind the 
little wall of bushes till Darcy would be gone. 
You might not be well pleased he to have seen us. 

Scarry: Little I'd care he to see you or not to 
see you ! 

O'Malley: They are saying he gives you no 
leave so much as to cross the threshold of the door. 

Brogan: There is surely some great treasure in 
this old kennel of a place that he has no mind to let 
slip from him. His eyes stuck to the window and 
his ears to the hinges of the lock. 

Scarry: Whatever he does I had enough of it! 
I have a mind to break out loose and let the whole 
world get a view of that great treasure at the fair 
of Loughrea tomorrow! 

Brogan: Is that the way with you? But you'd 
be in dread of him to do it. 

Scarry: I'm in no dread of him. It is his most 
enemy I would make welcome on this night. 

O'Malley: I thought he had a great smack for 
you. Ye that were two comrade lads in your 
young days, as near as the tree to the bark. 

Scarry: He went too far in the way he went 
on. I have a temper of my own. There's an end 
of my service in this place. 



Shan walla 151 

Brogan: {Sitting down.) I wonder now is the 
horse as good as what they say? 

Scarry: He's good enough. 

Brogan: Darcy is in dread they were telHng me 
of letting so much as shadow be seen on the wall in 
any place there might be humans passing. 

O'Malley: A foolish man, a foolish man. It 
is not putting a wall around the field will stop the 
cuckoo from quitting it. 

(Bride comes in. She has put on the dress she 
had been working at, and dressed her 
hair. She is startled when she sees 
guests.) 

Bride: Is that yourself, Pat? I didn't know 
there was anyone in it. 

0*MaUey: Is it so. And here is another kins- 
man of your own that you didn't see this good 
while. A great pity it failed him to come to the 
wedding and the dance. 

Brogan: Will you give me a welcome, Bride? 

Bride: It is my custom to give a welcome to all 
that come in at Lawrence Scarry's door. 

Scarry: Well now aren't you very dressed out 
today more than any other day? 

O'Malley: It is the wedding-dress she is wear- 
ing sure enough. 



152 Shanwalla 

Bride: I was putting a few wilts in it where it 
was too wide and I am after fitting it on. 

O'M alley: Thinking to wear it you are I sup- 
pose on the day of the Inchy races. 

Bride: I am, so long as the weather will be 
good. I would not wish the rain to interfere with 
the flowers {Strokes dress.) 

Brogan: Grandeur and finery to be so plentiful 
with you it is a great wonder you not to have silk 
shoes on your feet. 

Scarry: So she will have them, and a suit of 
changing colours, that she will be laughing with 
the delight of them. 

O^M alley: I wonder you to go handle that skil- 
let that might spoil the neatness of your gown. 

Bride: Put it on the fire, you, Lawrence, where 
you'll be in need of a drop of warm water, for it is 
time for you give Shanwalla his feed. {Goes.) 

Brogan: Shanwalla! That is a name is well 
known through the five provinces ! 

Scarry: There's little known about him yet. 

Brogan: More maybe than you think. 

Scarry: No one saw him since he came back 
from the trainer. It is within in the demesne 
he gets his exercise since then. 

Brogan: If they didn't see him they heard of 
him. 



Shan walla 153 

Scarry: I gave out nothing or spoke his name 
at all since the time he was brought back into my 
charge. 

Brogan: There is maybe one that did speak. 

Scarry: Who was that? 

Brogan: The man that owns him. 

Scarry: You're out. It is he himself forbade 
me to let one word about him out of my mouth. 

O'M alley: There are other ways of giving out 
news besides with the tongue. To be looking 
down as if there was a secret between yourself 
and the depths of the earth, and to be whispering 
with yourself and starting, and to be giving little 
hints about some thing you could tell if you had a 
mind; and to be as if deaf and dumb every time 
the race is so much as spoken of. That's what 
makes the lads that meet him full sure he has 
the winner in his hand. There's not a man 
within the seven counties but has got wind of 
him. 

Brogan: Whether or no, it's impossible at this 
time to get any odds against Shanwalla. 

O'Malley: Did you put anything on him your- 
self, Lawrence? 

Scarry: I did not. Where would I meet with 
anyone to make bets with? I was hoping for good 
odds. 



154 Shanwalla 

Brogan: You're hoping for what you won't 
get. There is but one way for you to make your 
profit on the race. 

Scarry: The one way is to back him. 

Brogan: It is not, but to bet against him. 

Scarry: He will surely win. 

Brogan: That was said of many a horse that 
it failed after to get the goal. 

Scarry: There'll be no failing in him. The 
jockey is one that will ride him steady and will not 
let him renage. 

O'Malley: I knew a man out in Athlone had 
not so much as a red halfpenny, and it was a 
horse he backed at Mullingar races, and that had 
no great name, put a large fortune into his hand. 

Brogan: I remember the race. It was a grey 
was the favourite, Hill of Allen is the name was on 
him. There was no other horse fit to come near 
him. 

O'Malley: My man that bet against him. 

Scarry: What way did he win so? 

Brogan: He had knowledge of the horse and 
that he was fidgety at the start — nervous like 
— ^till he'd set out. So he made objection to every 
start that was made, till he had him dancing wild, 
rearing up to the skies, and flakes flying from his 
bit. By the time the real start was made, in place 



Shan walla 155 

of going forward it is a side leap he made, and 
threw the jockey, and no more about him. 

Scarry: That was a very roguish thing to do. 

O'Malley: Ah what roguish! If God allotted 
riches for some people and allotted more to be in 
poverty, it is best for a man to look out for himself. 
That man I tell you had debts down on him, and 
since that time he grew into riches and is his own 
master. 

Brogan: No one putting orders on him to go 
there or hither, and no need ever to humble himself 
to another. 

Scarry:, The man that would make me an offer 
to do a trick of the sort it would be the worst day 
ever went over him. It's a thing I wouldn't listen 
to from the Queen under her crown. 

Brogan: Ah, by your own telling, Darcy doesn't 
give you such good treatment you should be slav- 
ing your life out for him the way you do. 

Scarry: Whatever I do for him this is the last 
night I'll be doing it. The horse will be going to 
his own stables in Ravahasy tomorrow. 

O'M alley: Is it that this is the last night you 
have charge of him? 

Scarry: That's what I said. And I'll take good 
charge of him. There's no enemy will make any 



156 Shanwalla 

headway putting him astray. I'll stop waking 
with him through the night time. 

Brogan: We'll stop along with you. I have 
here a pack of cards. 

O^Malley: There's a drop here in the bottle I 
have. You won't feel the time passing. 

Scarry: I'll be best stopping alone. The night 
is not long passing since the days took a stretch. 

Brogan: It's more likely sleep will come upon 
you than if you would be taking a hand with the 
cards. 

Scarry: I'll bid Bride to put down black tea 
for me that will keep me waking. The tea is very 
lively. 

0' Motley: That is a poor thing to go drink. It 
will set the heart uneasy and leaping within you. 

Scarry: {Pointing to door.) Well, boys, I'll 
put you on your road as far as the river, where I'll 
be getting a pail of pure water in the pool that is 
below the bridge. The skillet is on the boil that I 
can take the chill off of it. It is time for the 
horse get his feed. 

Brogan: I'll engage it is good feeding he is 
getting. What is it you are giving him? 

Scarry: Everything of the best. 

O'Malley: There's some says new milk to be 
very serviceable. 



Shanwalla 157 

Scarry: Ah, it's not fattening a pig I am. I 
wouldn't go as far as that. But meal and water 
and good oats having mixed up with them an odd 
time a couple of fresh eggs. 

O'MaUey: That's great diet, God bless him ! 

Brogan: How often now would you give him 
that in the day? 

Scarry: Three times, and no muzzle but to let 
him measure his own belly. It's a poor thing to 
send a horse out hungry to a race. 

O'Malley: A naggin' of whiskey is a thing now 
I saw give great courage at the start. 

Brogan: There was a red mare I used to be 
with throve on nothing so well as split peas. A 
great horse — she'd ate you if she had a foal. 

Scarry: The oats we have is as hard as any sort 
of peas you could meet. It was harvested in the 
heat of last August two years. 

Brogan: Is that it within in the sack? 

Scarry: It is not, but within in the bin it is. 

Brogan: A lock on it the same as if it was coined 
gold. I suppose Darcy gives it out himself? 

Scarry: He does not. ( Unlocks it.) 

Brogan: {Looking in.) And the sieve locked up 
along with it. 

Scarry: That's the master's orders. And 
Bride that has to scald it every day. 



15^ Shanwalla 

Brogan: {Fingering oats.) It is seemingly 
middling good. 

Scarry: Ah, what middling? Sure it weighs 
near fifty pound to the bushel. {Shakes sieve.) 
Do you hear it rattling the same as grains of 
shot? 

Brogan: Will you be giving it to him now? 

Scarry: I will not till I'll have the water drawn 
and give him a drink. I must go get it now. 

Brogan: I'd like well to get one view of him. 
Open now the door. 

Scarry: I will not do that. He's someway 
nervous ; he to be aware of a stranger late or early 
it would startle and disturb him. 

Brogan: I am well used to handling horses. 

Scarry: You wouldn't handle this one. You 
to go in to him offering to give him a feed or a 
drink, you should keep your seven yards out from 
him or you'd get his hocks in your face ! 

O'Malley: He must be very violent and hurtful. 

Scarry: It's only with strangers he does be 
that way. The minute he'll feel them coming 
he'll show a very roguish eye. But as to myself, 
he'd give me leave to let off gunpowder in his 
manger, or to squeal the bagpipes around his stall. 

O'Malley: It is given in to Brogan that he has a 
way with him. 



Shanwalla i59 

Scarry: The trainer himself would not get leave 
to comb his mane or his tail. It's the work of the 
w^orld to get a blacksmith with courage to put a 
shoe on him. Come on now, it's time for me draw 
the water. 

Brogan: {Sitting down) I'll follow you. I 
should take out of my shoe a pebble that preyed 
on me and I coming the road. 

Scarry: {At door.) Hurry on so. I'm waiting. 

O'M alley: Is that now the old forge is in the 
corner of the yard ? 

Scarry: It is, and there used to be two smiths 
working in it every day of the year. 

O'M alley: The bellows should be broke by 
this. Or is there a bellows in it at all? 

Scarry: The handle is in it, — wait till I'll show 
you. 

{They go out, Scarry taking pail.) 

Brogan: {Calling out) I'll be after ye! {Gets 
up, looks out door, takes lid off the saucepan. Takes 
a couple of small packets wrapped in blue paper 
from his pocket. Puts one hack and shakes contents 
of other into saucepan. Bride Scarry has come to 
other door, and stands looking at him.) 

Bride: What is that you are doing, James Brogan ? 

Brogan: {Startled) I am following after 
Lawrence that went on to the bridge. 



i6o Shan walla 

Bride: {Going between him and door) I saw 
you putting some thing into the skillet. 

Brogan: There's some see more than is in it to 
see. It is your sight that spread on you. 

Bride: I am surer of my own sight, James 
Brogan, than I am of your word. 

Brogan: Is it since you joined with the Scarrys 
you are grown so proud to be running down your 
own breed? 

Bride: It is well I know, whatever brought you 
here, you are at no good trade. 

Brogan: Is it to rob you think me to be come? 
I see no great sign of riches about the place. It is 
to a better house than this I would go and I search- 
ing out profit for myself. I tell you Bride Scarry 
for all your pride it is no great match that you 
made. 

Bride: I got an honest man, and that is what 
you never were yourself. For you did not deal 
right and fair with them that trusted you and 
employed you. 

Brogan: It is you yourself drove me from 
honest ways the time you turned your own face 
against me. 

Bride: My face was against you from the time 
I knew your ugly behaviour, an army man — a 
deserter — I know what it was brought you into 



Shanwalla i6i 

Liverpool gaol. I tell you I am well satisfied 
having my face turned towards a better man. 

Brogan: You could have made a good man of 
me and a well doing man if you had but taken me 
in hand. I give you my oath you are the only 
woman was ever shut up in my heart. 

Bride: Do you think with this foolish talk to 
turn me from what I saw? I know well you have 
the mischief in your mind. 

Brogan: Is it living near Darcy has put these 
suspicions into you? 

Bride: It is not, but only what I know about 
yourself. 

Brogan:. What high notions you have learned 
since you quitted Munster? A great judge you 
are of ^good or bad, as if you were the biggest in 
the world! 

Bride: It is Lawrence will judge your behaviour. 
I will tell him what I saw. How do I know was 
it to do him some injury you put that — whatever 
it was — into the water. 

Brogan: You'll tell him no such thing. 

Bride: I will, and let you make out your own 
case. 

Brogan: Didn't you get very cross and bold! 
Your voice raised and shrill the same as some 
fierce woman in a fight ! 



1 62 Shan walla 

Bride: It is he will take you in hand so soon 
as he will come back. 

Brogan: Whatever I may want to do, never fear 
I'll do it in the spite of his teeth! 

Bride: I will bring all your bad deeds to light ! 

Brogan: You are making a great mistake! 
Give me your promise to be quiet or I'll gag your 
mouth. I'll master you! 

Bride: You might not get leave to do that. It 
is the Almighty is our master in everything. 

Brogan: You need not think to escape me ! I'll 
come down on you! I'll put right fear on you. 
I'll make you go easy from this out — I'll banish 
you out of the world. 

Bride: God will not forgive you those threats. 

Brogan: I'll destroy Lawrence along with you! 

Bride: Living or dead I'll be against you, and 
you trying to do injury to my man! {Brogan 
clutches her, she calls out) Lawrence! Lawrence! 

Brogan: I'll put you under the clay! I'll 
have the life of you. 

Bride: {Trying to free herself) It is hard to 
quench life ! 

Darcy: {Calling from the yard) Are you calling 
Lawrence, Mrs. Scarry? He's not here. 



Shanwalla 163 

Brogan: {Releasing her) It's Darcy! What 
way will I get out of this! 

Bride: You can go out the coach-house door. 
I'll give you time to escape, and let you never let 
me see one sight of you again ! {Brogan goes) 
{Bride puts lid on kettle^ puts it aside.) 

Darcy: {Coming in) Where is Larry? 

Bride: He'll be here, sir, in a minute. 

Darcy: Did he tell you he had a falling out 
with me this morning? 

Bride: He did not, sir. 

Darcy: He is too short in his temper. 

- Bride: That would be a pity. 

Darcy: He is too full of suspicions. 

Bride: I wouldn't think that. 

Darcy: The minute I say a word he thinks I 
mean more than is in it, and up with him like a 
bursting bottle, that you daren't go near him or 
speak reason to him. 

Bride: Oh you could, sir. He has a great re- 
spect for you. 

Darcy: So have I a great respect for him. But 
I am not without a spirit of my own, and some of 
these days he'll maybe go too far. 

Bride: He would be sorry to do that. 



1 64 Shanwalla 

Darcy: Well now if you wish to help him 

Bride: That is my wish indeed, to be a helper 
to him. 

Darcy: I'd be glad you to keep a watch on him, 
and to quieten him down any time he will be 
getting these high notions into his head, and make 
him keep that sharp tongue of his in order. 

Bride: I will do that, sir. He would be sorry 
to give you any annoyance. He thinks the world 
and all of you. 

Darcy: And another thing. Any time he might 
be cross or have a drop taken, or be anyway put 
out at all, let you keep him out of my way, for I'd 
be sorry to have words with him again, or any 
quarrel at all. 

Scarry: {Coming in with pail) Give me here 
the skillet, Bride. 

Bride: {Taking it and holding it behind her) 
I have to heat some more water. 

Scarry: What is in it will do. 

Bride: It will not. {She pours it into a pan and 
puts on shelf) It won't take only a minute. There 
is the big kettle you can pour some in. 

Scarry: {Pouring and putting on fire) Hurry 
on now. Did you bring the eggs? 



Shanwalla 165 

Bride: I have a couple in the loft, 111 go get 
them. 

Scarry: {Sarcastically) Let you hurry so, till 
Mr. Darcy will be satisfied we are not neglecting 
his horse. 

Darcy: It's not that brought me. I'll not be 
stopping. 

Bride: Do not go sir, till I will come back. I 
have a thing that must be told out, and that it is 
right for you to hear. 

Scarry: Go do your business now, and don't 
mind talking till you'll come back {Pushes her out 
half playfully) . Then stoops, takes up paper Brogan 
had thrown in ashes, takes dip candle out of a tin 
candlestick, puts paper under to steady it and puts 
hack on mantleshelf) . 

Darcy: You were put out Larry a while ago at 
me saying I was uneasy about the horse. 

Larry: He is your own property. 

Darcy: That's not it, but there are things you 
don't understand. 

Scarry: It's Hkely enough I have bad under- 
standing. 

Darcy: There's a bad class of people going 
through the world. 



1 66 Shanwalla 

Scarry: I don't need understanding to know 
that much. 

Darcy: Have done with humbugging. I have 
been given sure information that there will be an 
attempt made against Shanwalla. 

Scarry: Let them do their best. The ruffians ! 

Darcy: Do you see now that it is best to bring 
him over to my own yard? But I depend on you 
to come along with him. I have no one I could 
trust him with but yourself. 

Scarry: I'll come so. But why didn't you tell 
me that in the commencement? 

Darcy: You'll come now, tonight? 

Scarry: I cannot until morning, till I'll ready a 
lodging there beyond for the wife. 

Darcy: Come early so, before there will be 
people moving about. Here is the key of the 
stable. I have another for my own use. Don't let 
it out of your own hand ! 

Scarry: {Putting key on a nail.) I will come 
at the brink of dawn. 

Darcy: There is some noise like a fall. 

Scarry: It is likely the rats. You would swear 
at some times there to be armies battling in the 
house. 



Shanwalla 167 

Darcy: Like a little scream I thought I heard. 

Scarry: You'd hear every class of noise in this 
place. There's no doubt but rats are a terror. I 
don't know why is it they are in the world at 
all. 

Conary: {Bursting door open) Come out here 
for the love of God, Lawrence Scarry, and see 
what has happened your wife! {Lawrence rushes 
out.) 

Darcy: {Seizing Conary) What is the matter? 
What has happened? Where is she? 

Conary: Out there abroad on the stones. A 
fall I heard. {Scarry rushes out.) 

Conary: And like a Httle cry. ... I made my 
way to it from the shed where I was . . . and my 
foot struck against something that was the ladder 
that had fallen to the ground. 
{A low cry heard outside.) 

Darcy: My God! 

Conary: I stooped down my hand, and I felt 
a little head that I knew to be her head, and I 
raised it up but it fell back this way {Makes sign 
with hand) on the flags. . . . What is this that 
is wet on my palm? 

Darcy: It is blood. 



1 68 Shanwalla 

Scarry: {Coming in with her body in his arms). 
Make way for her! She is gone out of our hand! 
{Lays her down.) 

Darcy: My God ! That cannot be ! 

Scarry: {Kneels and lays his head on her breast.) 
O Bride! My darling and my first love! 

Conary: {Kneeling) 

Brigit, break the battle of death before her! 

Let the cloak of Mary be under her head ! 
Come young Michael lead her by the hand 

To the country of the angels, to the white 
Court of Christ! 



Curtain 



ACT II 

Scene: Two days later. Same as last, hut a settle 
bed in the room. There are bottles and pipes 
lying about, and ends of five large candles in 
brass candlesticks. Scarry is sitting by the fire 
with head in hands. O'Malley comes in. 

O'Malley: It should ease your mind, Lawrence, 
the wake to be over and all to have passed so nice 
and so conifortable. {Pauses but Scarry is silent.) 
Ah, no wonder you to be lonesome and lonesome 
looking! Very sudden she went indeed; never a 
word out of her they were telling me, from the 
time you brought her from wh^re she was lying on 
the stones and laid her down upon the floor. 
{Another pause.) But there is no one but must say 
you did your best for her, living or dead, putting a 
good coffin on her and leaving her down with her 
own people in the graveyard of EserkeUy. And 
everyone is talking of the wake — nothing scarce in 
it but all plentiful. But with all the drink was in 
it there was no leaping or playing or funning, for 
there was no one but was sorry for her. Is it a 
fact now that Darcy himself sent provision from 

169 



170 Shanwalla 

the big house, even to the five white candles that 
were kindled and burning around her? {Scarry 
nods.) Well it was a mournful thing to happen, 
but we cannot have our own way always, and you 
have a right not to neglect yourself, but to give 
over fretting, for it's likely you have a long life 
before you. 

Scarry: (With a bitter laugh.) A long life is 
it? That is a thing my most enemy would wish 
to me. 

O'Malley: Ah, your grief will wear itself out 
after a while, where it was the will of God. 

Scarry: {With another laugh.) That's the talk 
of women and of fools ! And why would God have 
any spite against me more than any other one ? 

O'Malley: Well there's no one at all, they do 
be saying, but is deserving of some punishment 
from the very minute of his birth. 

Scarry: And is it for the sin of the apple you 
are drawing down that curse upon me? There is 
no fair play in that. 

O'Malley: Sure it is allotted to every Christian 
to meet with his share of trouble. 

Scarry: It is a bad lot that fell upon myself! 
It is no way fair trouble to have been settled for me 
in the clouds of the sky at the time I made my first 
start in the world. 



Shan walla 171 

O'Malley: You maybe did some contrary deed 
yourself, without putting blame upon the skies. 

Scarry: I tell you I made no bad deed to drag 
me down more than another. I was no robber 
or treacherous friend ! I harmed no person young 
or old or did this or that ! I coveted no gift from 
the riches of the kings of the earth, or broke the 
bars of the treasury of heaven ! 

O'Malley: Ah, where's the use of talking? 

Scarry: God to have any grudge against me 
wouldn't it be enough to let it fall on myself and 
not to leave it on my companion to pay the pen- 
alty? What call had the armies of heaven to 
bring away the woman had no sharpness in her 
mouth? It is a great loss to the world that little 
laugh to be banished out of it! 

O'Malley: It will not serve you to be roaring 
and running this way and that way like a mare 
would be screeching after her foal athrough the 
rocks. 

Scarry: What way did it fail the harm to fall 
on the horse was in it and that I took delight in ? 
Hadn't he a name big enough to satisfy the pride 
and the covetousness of death? Oh, Bride, my 
heart is linked to you yet, that you could draw me 
to the ends of the grey world ! 

O'M alley: Lie down now on the bed and take 
your rest, where you never closed an eye the two 



172 Shanwalla 

nights since she went from you. It is the passion 
of sleep that has you racked and that is turning 
you to be mad and wild. 

Scarry: {Stumbles over to side of bed, then turns 
hack.) What way would I lie in my warmth, and 
she being frosty cold in Eserkelly, and a made 
grave all that is left to her ! 

O'Malley: There is no one but will tell you that 
you will surely come to her again, on the far side of 
the world. 

Scarry: There is no world of the living on the 
far side ! That is a deception and a vanity ! She 
to be living she would not leave me my lone, if she 
had to break through the flags of the floor of 
heaven ! We to die there is nothing left of us but 
as if a breeze of wind that is passed away, and no 
more about it. 

O'Malley: Take but one half hour's sleep I say, 
and your senses will come back to you and your 
reason. 

Scarry: I wish to God you could put me in my 
sleep for seven years or seven quarters of the year 
itself ! That would be very good. Is there drink 
enough left in the wake-house to bring down sleep 
and f orgetf ulness ? (Seizes bottle and pours into a 
pewter mug, then puts it down again.) Oh, Bride, 
what am I saying? What way can I lie down in 
my sleep when it is far from you will be my wak- 



Shanwalla 173 

ing? There is nothing will befriend me only- 
death — my life to burn out in a minute the same 
as the tails the children do be kindling in the 
barley gardens! It will be best let it out from 
me with some little sharp bit of iron! (Goes to 
door.) 

Brogan: (Who has been at door for a moment or 
two comes in.) Here let you sit down. (Pushes 
over mug to him.) Drink it now. It's little but 
you'll fall in your standing with the weakness. 
(Pushes him into chair.) Have courage man! 
You are shaking like the tree of the Crucifixion ! 
(Scarry drinks.) 

O'Malley: That's right. It will bring the 
senses back into him . 

Brogan: (Sits down and lights pipe.) Tell me 
now, Pat O'Malley, what way is the world shaping? 
Have you any new tidings of the big races of Inchy 
tomorrow ? 

O'Malley: Sure there is no talk of any other 
thing. There is quality gathered into all the big 
gentlemen's houses. 

Brogan: Would you say now Shanwalla to be 
the favourite yet ? 

O'Malley: Why woiildn't he be the favourite? 
He's a great sort. He is far beyond any one of 
the blood horses will be in it. 



174 Shanwalla 

Brogan: You heard nothing against him I 
suppose ? 

O'Malley: Sure there is nothing can be brought 
against him. You know that before. 

Brogan: A touch of the strangles they were 
telling me he has got. It's a bad thing to get quit 
of or to cure. 

Scarry: That's a damned lie they told you say- 
ing that. He never had any such a thing. 

Brogan: Ah, it's hard to believe all the lies that 
is in the world. I suppose you didn't see him since 
he went out of your care? 

Scarry: I did not. 

O'Malley: I got a sketch of him myself that 
night, the night of the misfortune that came on 
this place. It was Darcy himself was leading him 
away by the river path. It was Lawrence Scarry 
had more hand in him than any trainer or tribe 
of trainers. He behaved very mean doing that. 

Scarry: He did not. He behaved fair and 
square to me. 

Brogan: That's very good. It is the neigh- 
bours I heard talking, saying that he someway 
mistrusted you. 

Scarry: He behaved good and honest. He said 
to me to move over to his own yard so soon as I 



Shanwalla 175 

would have done . . . this business here. It is 
there I should be going at this time. 

Brogan: They are saying he tried to bring 
back the trainer from the Curragh in your place, 
and that he would give you no more leave to 
attend the horse. 

Scarry: Little they know, so full as they are of 
fancies. 

Brogan: Well, I'm only telling you what is 
said. 

Scarry: {Taking key from nail.) Look at that 
key ? Do you know what is it ? 

Brogan: What way would I know? 

Scarry: . It is the key of Shanwalla's stable 
beyond. Darcy gave it into my hand, and he gave 
with it full leave to go in at any minute of the night 
or day. Was that now mistrusting me? 

Brogan: {Touching key.) You are not telling 
me he did that much? 

Scarry: He knows well the love I have for that 
horse ! I'll like well to see the way he'll put defeat 
on the whole rout of them ! 

Brogan: That's right! Go see the race to- 
morrow. You'll get some life in you with the 
shouting of the crowds upon the course. 

Scarry: {Drinking again.) Shouting ''Shan- 
walla" they will be! It is I will give out my own 



176 Shanwalla 

shout. Ill lay my bets with the best of them. 
I'm not put out yet! 

Brogan: That's it! . . . There's no one on 
the course will make bigger money than what you 
will, and you to take courage in your hand. 

Scarry: Money? What would I want getting 
money I I would not stoop my back for it, and it 
to be shining on the grass! 

Brogan: That now is a solid key. . . Let me 
take it in my hand a minute. 

Scarry: I will not do that. {Puts key in pocket.) 

Brogan: What way could I harm it ? 

Scarry: The man that gave it to me said not to 
let it out of my own hand. I will hold to that 
command. 

Brogan: (Sneeringly,) You are very faithful 
to Hubert Darcy. 

Scarry: He trusted me with it and he can trust 
me. 

Brogan: If he has trust in you, it is you your- 
self maybe put too much trust in him. 

Scarry: The thing he gave into my care, I will 
never give it up to any other one. There is no 
book or no paper will ever have me pictured doing 
that. 

Brogan: I am saying you maybe think too 
much of Darcy. 



Shanwalla i77 

Scarry: He is my master and my near friend. 
He will never be hurted or harmed by enemy or 
illwisher so long as I'll be living in the world. 

Brogan: A pity he not to have been as faith- 
ful to yourself. 

Scarry: He to say a sharp word to me, it is 
short till he would come back to make it up with 
me in some friendly way. 

Brogan: Indeed he was very often visiting this 
old kennel. 

Scarry: Evening or morning he was never 
hardly without taking a course around the place. 

Brogan: If you are a man at all, Lawrence 
Scarry, you will rise up and draw down a revenge 
on the man was offering temptation to your wife ! 

Scarry: That's a blasted lie ! 

Brogan: I say he was offering temptation to 
Bride Scarry. 

Scarry: It is not to my wife he would speak a 
word of the kind! I'd have the life of any man 
thought that. 

Brogan: I am but saying what I know. 

Scarry: She would have turned him out the 
door if he had but said one word. She would have 
told myseH. 

Brogan: That is the very thing she was about 
to do. The time you came up from drawing water 



lyB Shanwalla 

in the river who did you find before you in this 
place? Was it Darcy? and he and herself talking 
together. 

Scarry: What harm if he was in it? 

Brogan: You had but just gone out when he 
came in — all the same as if he had been watching 
you. I that was taking a pebble from my shoe 
made away through the coachhouse door. I 
came back there again in a short while to know 
was he gone out. He was there yet. 

Scarry: Why wouldn't he be there? 

Brogan: What he had said to her I don't know, 
but I heard well what she herself was saying — she 
had a very clear sweet voice. 

Scarry: She had that. 

Brogan: She was saying at that time: "I have 
my face turned to a better man." And after that 
she said, '1 was certain you had some mischief in 
your heart" ; and after that again, *lt is Lawrence 
will be the judge." He broke out angry then and 
gave up his whisper and called out, 'If you say one 
word to him it will be the worst word ever you said 
in your life. I'll put right fear on you, I'll master 
you"! 

Scarry: Is it Darcy that was my friend said that ! 

Brogan: You yourself came in then at the door, 
and I made away by the bridge over the river. 



Shan walla 179 

Scarry: He said that to her! If you are lying 
I'll squeeze the breath out of you! {Seizes him.) 

Brogan: So help me God I heard the woman 
that was your wife giving out those words in this 
place. I'll swear it in any court in Ireland! 

Scarry: Let me out of this! I'll go task him 
with it! I'll take his life! 

Brogan: You will find it hard to do that, and 
his people being around him in the big house. 

Scarry: My seven curses on him and on his 
house and his four-footed beasts and his means and 
upon his soul! I'll put my heavy vengeance 
on him! I'll make an attack on him at the race- 
course in the sight of all! 

Brogan: You will not. You will draw down 
on him a surer punishment than that. To put 
him back, and to lessen his means, and to bring 
down his pride, till he will quit the country being 
vexed and ashamed. 

Scarry: What way will I do that ? 

Brogan: You have but the least little thing 
to do. Just to go into the stable beyond on this 
night, and to put what is in this paper {takes 
out packet) into the horse's flour and water or into 
his feed of oats the way he will fail in the race. 
That is the only best thing to do, and you not 
being too tender with the horse. 



i8o Shanwalla 

Scarry: Darcy's horse is it! My curse upon 
him! It's well pleased I'd be seeing him sunk in 
the river below, or to struggle and smother in a 
bog! 

Brogan: That's right now. 

Scarry: I'll go do it! I'll drag Darcy down! 

O'Malley: You cannot go out at this time. It 
isn't hardly up to ten o'clock. They would see 
you coming in the yard. There is brightness in the 
young moon. You must wait till farther out in the 
night. They will all be in their sound sleep that 
time. The horse himself will make no outcry, 
you being no stranger coming to the stall. 

Scarry: It is long to me till I'll set out, till I'll 
go do my revenge. 

Brogan: We'll stop along with you. 

O'Malley: We cannot. Here is Owen Conary 
coming to the door. 

Brogan: Let you get shut of him, Lawrence, 
throwing yourself on the bed saying you have need 
of sleep, and that much is no lie! We'll come 
back here to you, and he to have gone his road. 
(They go hy left door.) 

Conary: {Groping at door.) Is there anyone 
within? 

Scarry: Is it in here you are coming, Conary? 
This is a bad place for one that is questing to fill 



Shanwalla i8i 

his bag. It is not a great share of leavings is here 
after the great throng was in it, and the great 
feast we had these two nights back ! 

Conary: It is not food I am craving, Lawrence 
Scarry. 

Scarry: Drink it should be so, and tobacco! 
There's no one comes into this place without covet- 
ing to bring something away out of it. There were 
some had an eye on the horse and another coveted — 
curse him — a nearer thing and a thing he never 
could reach to. And as to what you yourself are 
coveting {turns up bottles) it is gone, and no more 
to be got. 

Conary: That is a sort of welcome should drive 
me out the door! I'm not one to be bothering or 
giving trouble ! It is now and forever I will turn 
my back on you ! 

Scarry:. (Seizing and dragging him to hearth.) 
Stop there now by the fire . (Pushes him into chair . ) 
I've no mind to be left my lone to please any man 
or any two men, and I going to lie down in my 
sleep . . . (Sits on bed.) What sort is the wea- 
ther without? 

Conary: Fair enough now, but there is a mist 
coming up from the west. 

Scarry: Dry your feet there from the damp of 
the road. Waken me after a while, and I to be too 



1 82 Shanwalla 

long sleeping. I'll be wanting to go out in, the 
darkness, for a night ramble. That's the time all 
will be quiet and no one to meddle or put you back 
. . . that's the time for mischief and for the fox 
to get his prey ! {Lies down) 

Canary: It might be best. It's hard lie quiet 
through the hours of the night, when you are down 
and a care on top of you. ... If I didn't know 
you to be racked and wore out I would put the 
beggar's curse on you ! B ut God help you ! There 
never was such trouble in anything ever a man put 
over him! A little saint she was and a loughy 
woman besides. Surely it was God called her, 
and His Lady. I could cry down my eyes thinking 
of her. The priest getting no leave to overtake 
her and not a good-bye in the world wide. {Lis- 
tens.) That is good ! The sleep is the best friend 
to any troublesome heart. But as to her that is 
gone, to be a day in her company would lengthen 
your life. A strange thing she to be holding 
the cup to me but three days ago; and in what 
world I wonder is she now? It is quiet and easy 
she should be at this time as it is well she deserved 
it. What call would she have to go walking? No 
children to care or to nourish ; no debt that would 
be a weight on her mind. . . . {Goes over and 
listens to Lawrence then comes hack.) Let him sleep 
on now while he can do it. God is the best and 



Shanwalla 183 

maybe after a while hell quieten things all over! 
{He nods over fire. Bride comes in. She stands by 
Lawrence. Then stoops a little.) 

Bride: Lawrence! Lawrence! Waken! It is I, 
myself, Bride your wife! (There is no movement 
from Lawrence . Canary still sits over fire.) 

Bride: Conary ! {He does not answer, she comes 
nearer.) Conary! It is I myself, Bride Scarry! 

Conary: {Uneasily.) Is there anyone anear 
me? 

Bride: It is Bride, your friend. Speak to me 
now, speak to m-C ! 

Conary: {Gettingup and shrinking.) It is but a 
voice in my ear. Let me go out of this ! 

Bride: Speak to me; question me? I can do 
nothing without you question me. 

Conary: I am affrighted, hearing the voice of 
the dead. 

Bride: My heart is living, Conary. I have not 
passed the mering of the world. It is to serve 
Lawrence I am come and to give him a warning — 
to save him from bad handling and from harm, to 
save him from doing a great wrong. Question me, 
question me ! 

Conary: There is something before me — some 
whiteness, it might be the flame upon the hearth. 
Lawrence ! Waken ! 



1 84 Shan walla 

Bride: He to waken itself he cannot see me, he 
cannot hear me. Look now I am here before you. 
Many a yesterday I took the hunger off you, and 
now you will not do this little thing for me ! 

Conary: What is it ? Who is it ? Is it that I 
have my eyesight? Oh, the darkness is come upon 
me again! Let me go away out of this! {He 
shrinks away groping out of door.) 

Bride: Is it not a hard case I to be a stranger 
now, and it is short since I was the woman of the 
house! {Goes hack to side of bed.) Lawrence! 
Lawrence ! have you no word at all for me ! You 
would not be in dread of me. Lift up your lips 
to me that is your wife ! . . . My grief, he cannot 
hear me — ^he cannot feel my hand ! Who is there 
now to help me unless it might be his friends on the 
other side. {She stands straight and lifts her hand.) 

I call now to the family of Heaven 
Tq^j3utxidges of mercy around him on every side ; 
Any bad thing might be coming from the left hand, 
I put the King of the Graces between himself and 
itself! 

Listen Martin and Patrick that do be praying for us, 
Do not let him be in bad case at the last 1 
He is all one with a bird has a trap closing around him. 
Stretch out now and turn him to the lucky road ! 
{Sound of talking at door. She goes to 
corner. Brogan and O'Malley come in.) 



Shanwalla 185 

Brogan: Is he in here at all ? 

O'M alley: He is in his sound sleep on the bed. 

Brogan: That is very good. He will be fresh 
and lively for the work is before him. 

O'Malley: It was a good thought you had, 
making up that story about Darcy. 

Brogan: We could not have brought him to our 
way without that. 

O'Malley: A foolish man he should be to give 
credit to it, and he knowing Darcy so well as what 
he does. But there was confusion in his mind 
with all the trouble he put over him. 

Brogan: The jealousy to come on a man, it is 
ea$y make him believe all. 

O'Malley: I was in dread we might have to do 
the job ourselves. 

Brogan: I wouldn't ask to bring him into it if 
we had power to do it without him. 

O'Malley: He having the key of the stable 
there'll be no stay in doing it. 

Brogan: It's easy to get the key. It 's likely it 's 
in the pocket where he left it a while ago. (Takes 
key from coat hanging by bed.) It's as good for me 
to keep it myself. (Puts it in pocket.) 

O'Malley: We can go on without him so. 

Brogan: The horse that would rouse the whole 
place with kicking and clattering, and he seeing 



1 86 Shanwalla 

strangers coming anear him. There is no one only 
Lawrence can handle him, and keep him quiet, he 
being used to his ways. {Shakes him.) Rouse 
yourself up now, Lawrence Scarry ! 

Scarry: What is it? 

Brogan: Let you waken ! 

O'Malley: It is time to stir yourself. 

Scarry: Is the night gone by? 

Brogan: It is not. You have it before you. 

Scarry: I was in a deep sleep. 

Brogan: We are come back sooner than we 
thought. It is dark the night is turned. There is 
come a clout over the moon. 

Scarry: I was through the world in my sleep. 

Brogan: You are wakened out of it now. 

Scarry: I was as if in some white place. It is 
likely it was a dream. 

O'M alley: Let you rise up now. 

Scarry: The sweetest sound of music ever I 
heard. {He is sitting on side of bed.) 

O'Malley: Put on your coat now and come 
on along with us. 

Scarry: {Puts on coat.) I am going out in the 
night. 

O'Malley: Come on so. 



Shanwalla 187 

Scarry: It is not with you I am going. I am 
going my lone. 

O'Malley: So you can go — over to the 
big stables. 

Scarry: It is not there I am going. 

Brogan: Where is it so? Is it to lay a com- 
plaint against us and a warning ? 

Scarry: It is not. But I will not go in your 
company. 

Brogan: Is it that you are going to renage and 
you after giving us your word ? 

O'Malley: Is it that you are falling back from 
drawing down your revenge ? 

Scarry: .That plan of revenge is as if gone 
from my mind. I have no desire to hurt or to 
harm any person at all. {Gets up.) 

Brogan: Ah, come along, man, with us and it 
will come back to you. 

Scarry: It is over to Eserkelly I am going. I 
have a mind to go look at Brigit's grave. 

Brogan: Making excuses you are. What 
would bring you there at this hour of the night? 

Scarry: I am uneasy without going there. 

Brogan: Scheming you are. What can you 
do for her ? She is safe enough in the grave. 

Scarry: The world wouldn't put it out of my 
head that she came anear me in my sleep. 



i88 Shanwalla 

Brogan: That is but vanity and foolishness. 
There is no one comes back from the dead. 

Scarry: So nice she looked and so calm and so 
mournful. I am going to you now, Bride, till I will 
cry my fill for you ! God knows, she to come back 
I would give her a good welcome, shadow and all 
as she might be ! 

O'Malley: It is that he is a coward and is 
afeard to do what he took in hand. 

Brogan: He has us made fools of. He has us 
robbed. 

O'Malley: It is easier save yourself from a 
rogue than from a liary person would not hold 
to his word. 

Brogan: Is it that you are a traitor or in dread 
to keep your purpose? 

Scarry: {Turning from door .) Is it of the like 
of ye I would be afeard ? 

O'M alley: {Taking his arm.) Come on now, 
Lawrence. 

Scarry: {Shaking him off.) Don't touch my 
clothes or don't come anear me ! 

Brogan: Come on and do what you have to do 
or you'll repent it. 

O'Malley: A renegade you are ! 

Scarry: Let you quit talking to me before I'll 
make you ! 



Shanwalla 189 

Brogan: No wonder he to be so cross and 
craven! It's likely what I said was no news to 
him. It's likely he knew well Darcy was after the 
wife. It's likely he had it planned to let her go 
with him before he wed with her ! 

Scarry: I'll have your life on the head of those 
words out of your lying mouth! {Strikes at him.) 

Brogan: {At door.) You may believe me this 
time! There is shortness of life before you. I'll 
send you to the slaughter. If ever you leaped 
high on any horse you'll make a higher leap again 
with the hangman ! {Flings Mm back and goes out 
hanging door.) 



Curtain 



ACT III 

Scene. A few days later. Office at Darcy's. A 
desk, one or two chairs and benches. Two girls 
coming in with a Policeman. 

2nd Girl: Is this now the Magistrate's Court? 

1st Policeman: It is so. It is here the Magis- 
trate will find proof who is it is guilty of destroy- 
ing his horse Shanwalla, the way it would not win 
in the race. 

1st Girl: It is Lawrence Scarry done it. The 
world that is saying that. 

1st Policeman: Keep your mouth quiet. That 
has yet to be proved. 

1st Girl: My uncle, that is Pat O'Malley, is 
laying down it will be proved by sure token. 

1st Policeman: Pat O'Malley! Take care will 
it be proved against himself. 

1st Girl: It will not. Aren't we after coming 
here purposely to prove his alibi? 

2nd Girl: A great wonder it was, Mr. Darcy to 
bring the horse out to the race and not to leave it 
in the stable the way it was. 

190 



Shanwalla 191 

1st Policeman: They thought there to be no- 
thing on it, and it leaving the yard. 

1st Girl: Sure, you saw the way it was, that it 
couldn't so much as raise a gallop, and all the world 
travelling to Inchy to see him, and all the bets 
that were on him gone astray. 

1st Policeman: I wasn't in it myself, but sent 
patrolling the Loughrea road. 

2nd Girl: A great pity you to have missed it. 
There was no one but had a bet on that horse. 

1st Girl: I, myself, that put a shilling on him. 
Word I had from a knacky man that got a tip from 
the stand. I think I never will chance a bet again. 

2nd Girl: I was late myself coming to the en- 
trance gap, and everyone pressing through it ; and 
there came a great noise of talking among the 
crowd, that I thought the race to be ended. The 
throng parted then and the light-weight came 
passing out, and he wearing Darcy's colours, grey 
and yellow. Very mournful looking he was, and 
his eyes going into the ground. Some man that was 
behind me on the road called out and asked was 
the honour of Mr. Darcy doing well at the leaps. 
And the jockey made as if an oath to himself and 
gave no answer at all. 

1st Girl: No, but wait till I tell you. I that 
saw more again. I that went up on some barrels 
the time I heard great cheers for Shanwalla that 



192 Shanwalla 

was coming the road ; prancing up he was and his 
coat shining. If Darcy had a mind to sell him that 
time, I tell you he'd have his full price got ! 

1st Policeman: It would be lucky for Darcy if 
he did sell him. 

1st Girl: The weighty part of the crowd came 
running to see him, such a welter and such a killing 
you never saw as was in it ; climbing and knocking 
the wall they were, till there was nothing left 
standing only gaps. 

1st Policeman: So I saw it myself after; that is 
the way it was. 

I St Girl: Shouting Shanwalla they were, that 
was for Galway, and all Munster against him! 
But all of a sudden it is to go wild like he did and 
to stop and to rear up, and Lawrence Scarry that 
was leading him strove to soother him down. 
But as he came to the field it is to go into a cold 
sweat he did, and then he went around in a sort of 
a megrim, the same as a man that would have 
drink taken. 

1st Policeman: So he had drink taken . . . 
of some sort. 

1st Girl: And is it true, so, that it is to poison 
him they did? 

2nd Girl: If they did itself, he is as well 
nearly as he was before. The farrier down from 
Craughwell that came and attended him. Sure 



Shan walla 193 

my grandfather was in it that is better again for 
cures, and that gave me the story down. 

1st Policeman: It is the farrier makes a claim 
to have brought him round. 

2nd Girl: Shivering he was, and they couldn't 
keep a drink with him he was that drouthy, and 
they gave him castor oil, for whatever you put 
before him, if it was soot and water, he must drink 
it. But the world wouldn't make him vomit, and 
it was my grandfather brought him round at the 
last, giving him a pint of forge water, and whisky 
and the white of an egg. And everyone that heard 
it said there was surely poison within in him. 
{Second Policeman comes in.) 

1st Policeman: {To Girls.) Go back there now 
out of the way. And let ye mind yourselves. It 
is as witnesses ye were brought here, and the less 
talk you let out of you the better it will be for the 
cause of justice and for yourselves. {To 2nd 
Policeman?) Did they find another magistrate 
to sit along with Mr. Darcy? 

2nd Policeman: Out searching for one we were 
the whole of the morning and no one to be found, 
where they were all gone to the meet of the hounds 
at Rahasane. 

1st Policeman: It wouldn't hardly be accord- 
ing to law, Mr. Darcy to judge his own case. 
13 



194 Shanwalla 

2nd Policeman: Sure, he has but to commit 
whoever is thought to have a hand in it for trial 
at the Gal way assizes. A week is no great hard- 
ship in gaol. 

1st Policeman: Did the Head Constable come 
yet? 

2nd Policeman: He did not. He is in pursuit 
of some trace or track of the guilty person that was 
put into his hand. 

1st Policeman: Who would he be now? 

2nd Policeman: How would I know, and he 
not willing to tell me? In dread I might catch 
him myself, I suppose he was. He is one is well 
pleased to take full credit for all. 

1st Policeman: There was some cause to sus- 
pect Pat O'Malley of Canamona they were telling 
me, and his cousin, James Brogan, from Limerick. 

2nd Policeman: I never heard much against 
Pat O'Malley but that he is poor and has debts 
down on him. Brogan, though, has the name of 
being a wild card, a rag on every bush, knocking 
about here and there. 

1st Policeman: It is likely it's after him the 
Constable is gone searching. 

2nd Policeman: {Looking from window.) He 
should be here by this. Mr. Darcy that is coming 
in will be vexed not seeing him. 



Shanwalla 195 

Darcy: {Coming in.) Is Lawrence Scarry here? 

2nd Policeman: I didn't see him, sir. 

Darcy: I'll want him to sift out evidence along 
with the Head Constable that might help us to 
find out who was it did this thing. 

2nd Policeman: I believe the Constable is of 
opinion he all to has his hand laid upon the rogue. 

Darcy: That's right. It is long to me till I'll 
have him before me. I won't be long sending him 
to his rightful place, that is gaol. 

1st Policeman: He'll be best there, surely. 

Darcy: He must be a terrible ruffian ! I never 
heard of a worse case in my lifetime! To come 
breaking into my stables and to try and do away 
with my horse ! 

2nd Policeman: It was a very ruffianly deed. 

Darcy: To go hurt a man you would want to 
put out of the way it would be bad enough. But I 
think it seventeen times worse to make an attack 
on an innocent creature that gave no provocation 
to anyone. You'd have been sorry to see the way 
he was ! 

1st Policeman: I was well pleased to hear he 
is at this time on the mending hand. 

Darcy: That has nothing to do with it! It's no 
thanks to the villain if he did escape. There was 



196 Shanwalla 

enough of poison left in the pail he drank from to 
do away with all the horses on the green of 
Ballinasloe ! 

2nd Policeman: So the Constable is after telling 
me. 

Darcy: The black-hearted ruffian! It is 
crooked law that wouldn't mix that same poison 
into the diet of the man used it on Shanwalla! 
He'll get hanging, anyway. There's some justice 
in that. 

1st Policeman: The law is very severe in those 
cases. 

Darcy: It couldn't be too severe! I wouldn't 
grudge it to my own brother, and I to have one, 
and he to have done such a deed ! 

1st Policeman: Two men, some are saying, that 
were in it. 

Darcy: It is glad I am to hear that! To give 
up two of them to the hangman will be some 
satisfaction, and will show some respect for 
Shanwalla ! 

1st Policeman: Here is the Head Constable 
coming, and a couple more along with him. They 
are bringing with them ... 

Darcy: The men they suspect, I suppose. Go 
tell them to hurry. And try can you find Lawrence 
Scarry. 



Shanwalla i97 

1st Policeman: I'll not have far to go look for 
him. He is close at hand. 

Constable: {Coming in.) I couldn't get here 
any sooner, sir. I have been searching the whole 
matter out. 

Darcy: That's right. Have you got hold of 
the man that did it ? 

Constable: In my opinion I have. 

Darcy: I was in dread you might not be able 
to put your hand on him. 

Constable: No fear of that. There is one thing 
sure in this world — when there's a crime there's a 
criminal. 

Darcy: It's not always so easy to find him. 

Constable: In some cases it is not. But it was 
easy enough this time. I've got him. 

Darcy: I thought there were two suspected. 

Constable: O'Malley and Brogan you are think- 
ing of. But they can clear themselves. They 
have their alibi as good as proved. 

Darcy: Who are you going to charge so? 

Constable: It is Lawrence Scarry. 

Darcy: Scarry ! . . . My Lawrence Scarry ! 

Constable: The same one. 

Darcy: Rubbish ! You might as well say that 
I myself did it ! 



198 Shanwalla 

Constable: The case is strong against him. 

Darcy: Some one has made up false witness. 

Constable: There was no need for that. There 
is proof. 

Darcy: There couldn't be proof of what didn't 
happen. Larry loved that horse ! 

Constable: That makes the crime the worse. 

Darcy: Where is he? He will be able to dis- 
prove it. 

Constable: We have him now at hand. I am 
making a search in the room at Cahirbohil where 
he was housed. I found this piece of blue paper 
stuck under a candle. It was in a tattered condi- 
tion and smelling of stale porter. It fits in shape 
and simihtude with the twisted paper we found on 
the stable floor and that had some remains of the 
poison in it yet. There are some grains of the 
same sort here. This is the document proves the 
case through and through. 

Darcy: If I thought it possible — but I don't — 
that he had gone out of his wits and done such a 
thing I would sooner withdraw the case than have 
it proved against him ! 

Constable: It would be impossible to do that. 
I have my report made to the inspector. It will 
be in the hands of the Crown. 



Shanwalla 199 

Darcy: I tell you he couldn't have done it! 
It was in the night time it was done, after ten 
o'clock, between that and early morning. 

Constable: It was within that time sure enough. 
You took notice yourself, sir, some of the flour was 
spilled from the box where it was. 

Darcy: If I did I thought it might be a rat or a 
mouse or a thing of the kind. I knew no one 
could have come in. I had locked the door myself. 
I had the key all the time. 

Constable: There was no other one, I suppose, 
has a key ? 

Darcy: No one — except Lawrence Scarry. 

Constable: So I was thinking. {Writes note.) 
I wasn't rightly sure till now. 

Darcy: It makes no difference. He wasn't 
near the stable. I was expecting him. He never 
came till morning. He told me he was tired out 
after the burying— and low-hearted — no wonder 
. . . and the day over, he had laid down to sleep 
on his bed. 

Constable: We'll soon know can he give proof 
of that. I'm not one to rush at a thing without 
sure evidence. 

Darcy: Why don't you go look for proofs 
against these other men? Had you no informa- 



200 Shanwalla 

tion against them? We might be able to prove it. 
Bring them in. 

Constable: All I heard was, they had bets put 
on against your own horse in the race. There was 
ill-feeling against them among those that lost their 
money. I was advised to make enquiry about 
them. I did that. I got no information was 
enough to charge them on. 

Darcy: Bring them here, I might make out 
something. {They are brought in. 0*MaUey is 
brought forward.) Now look here, my man, if you 
were brought in here, it is that there is something 
against you. What is it ? Do you know anything 
of what happened my horse? Did you ever see 
him or handle him? Say yes or no. 

O'Malley: I will. Previous to the day of the 
races I never laid an eye on him. 

Constable: He says he can give proof he was not 
out of his own house that night. 

O'M alley: So I can, too. There are two little 
girls of the neighbours can bear testimony to that. 

Darcy: Who are they? Will they be honest 
witnesses ? 

1st Policeman: Very decent little girls, sir, and 
well-spoken. Nieces of Pat O'Malley, I believe 
they are. 

Darcy: What have they to say? 



Shanwalla 201 

1st Girl: It was Thursday night. . . . 

Darcy: What Thursday night ? 

1st Girl: St. Brigit's Eve for the world. We 
met Pat O'Malley coming home, where he had 
been to the burying at Eserkelly ; and he having a 
pain in the jaw and it going athrough his head. 

2nd Girl: That is so. Cold, I suppose he got. 

1st Girl: We turned into the house with him, 
and we sat there for a while. 

Darcy: For how long ? 

1st Girl: A middling while, and he telling us 
newses of the burying. 

2nd Girl: Giving us an account of all the 
people that were in it. 

Darcy: That's enough. All I want to know is 
what time it was. 

2nd Girl: I couldn't know . . . only the 
middling right time. 

1st Girl: It was just on the stroke of ten o'clock 
we went in 

2nd Girl. 1 was forgetting that. Just up to 
ten o'clock. 

1st Girl: The wife put a hot plaster to the jaw 
and he went in to his bed, and we went away then, 
and the door was closed after us. Closed and 
locked ; and he never left the house till morning. 



202 Shanwalla 

2nd Girl: Till it was time to make a start for 
Inchy races. We were together going the road. 

Constable: You see, sir, it is hardly worth 
while going on with this case. 

Darcy: Go on then with the other, Brogan. 
Can he prove where he was that night ? 

Constable: That is a thing was laid down 
against James Brogan. He was seen coming out 
through a gap in the demesne wall at Cahirbohil 
about twelve o'clock Thursday night. 

Darcy: That is better. He is likely the man 
we want. Have you any witnesses? 

Brogan: You need bring no witness to that. I 
did come out that side. I thought it no harm 
where it was a mile of a short-cut. I had gone in 
to see a friend. 

Darcy: At that time of night? 

Brogan: No, but earlier. I went to visit him. 
I was coming back from the fair of Loughrea. 
Darkness overtook me on the road ; I went to ask 
a lodging of him. 

Darcy: What friend had you inside my 
demesne ? 

Brogan: I should sooner say kinsman by mar- 
riage. His wife's mother and my mother were 
mixed, blood thick, they were, two cousins. Any- 



Shanwalla 203 

one that has learning can read it on the headstone 
in Eserkelly. He was Lawrence Scarry. 

Darcy: What time was that ? 

Brogan: The time I went there it was close on 
ten o'clock. I stopped a good while, maybe two 
hours. 

Darcy: Then Scarry was in his own room 
where you were with him all that time! I knew 
he never left it. I knew he was speaking the 
truth! 

Brogan: I took my rest there for a while. But 
I did not say I was with him. I won't tell you 
one word of a lie. There was no one in the place 
but myself. 

Darcy: Where was he then ? 

Brogan: The Lord be praised, I do not know, 
and that I cannot tell. 

Darcy: He might have gone to some neigh- 
bour's house. 

Brogan: To be sure he might. That's what I 
was thinking myself. It will be easy for him call 
that neighbour to witness. 

1st Policeman: Owen Conary, the dark man 
that goes questing on the roads was talking abroad 
in the yard. I heard him give out he himself was 
the latest person was with Lawrence Scarry on 
that night. 



204 Shanwalla 

Darcy: Call him in then. He might settle the 
matter. 

Constable: He will, I'm thinking. One way or 
another. (Conary comes in.) 

Darcy: What time were you with Scarry at 
Cahirbohil Thursday night? 

Constable: If ever you were there at all. 

Conary: Why wouldn't I be there? I was in 
it surely. The time I went in it was near to ten 
o'clock. 

Constable: What way do you know that? 

Conary: I know it by the number of the steps 
I made, and I coming the road from Kilchriest. 

Constable: And Scarry was in it? 

Conary: He was to be sure. 

Darcy: How long did you stop with him? 

Conary: I don't know was it an hour, half an 
hour? I couldn't be rightly sure. 

Constable: Try and call up your memory now. 

Conary: I wouldn't be sure. My mind was 
on other things besides time. 

Darcy: You maybe stopped with him up to ten 
o'clock. 

Conary: I did and later, I can be certain of that. 

Darcy: This man Brogan says he was there at 
that time. 



Shanwalla 205 

Conary: He did not come in when I was in it. 
Lawrence Scarry was there in his lone. I talked 
with him a short while, till being tired and down- 
hearted he stretched himself in sleep on the bed 
through the night. 

Darcy: That's what he told me. It is certain 
he slept in his bed last night. This Brogan must 
be making a mistake or making up a story. He 
says he came in. You say no one at all came in. 

Conary: No one — unless. . . . 

Constable: Unless who ? Tell it out. 

Conary: I thought I saw . . . 

Constable: He is getting away from the truth. 
You know that you cannot see, and you having the 
eyesight lost, and being as you are stone dark. 

Conary: I never did before in my natural life. 
But I give you the bail of my mouth I saw that 
time, or it seemed to me that I saw. 

Darcy: Go on. What did you see? 

Conary: I saw Bride Scarry walking. 

Constable: This is superstition and a mockery. 
We all know her to be dead. 

Conary: I tell you she came in the spirit. 

Darcy: I'm afraid his mind is rambling. 

Conary: Why would she not come and the spirit 
not long gone out of her, where it is known God will 



2o6 Shanwalla 

blow His breath into those that are dead a hundred 
or two hundred years? 

Darcy: Did you speak to her? 

Canary: I did not ; and it is a great pity that it 
failed me to do it. But it was all strange to me. 
It is often I coveted to see the flame of the fire on 
the hearth, and there it was before me, and the 
walls of the house on every side. And as to her, I 
saw her as I never saw anyone in this life. But 
there being no one waking along with me, the 
fright went into my heart, and it failed me to 
question her, and I went out the door and made no 
stop or delay. 

Constable: You are certain it was Bride Scarry? 
What sort was she? 

Canary: She seemed to me to be coming from 
the south, and to have on her the lovely appearance 
of the people of heaven. 

Darcy: He is given over to dreams and visions. 
We are getting nothing from him at all. 

Constable: He was trying to befriend Scarry 
but there is nothing in what he says that can serve 
him. 

Darcy: Stop a minute. Scarry did not leave 
the house? He was in bed asleep when you went 
out? 



Shanwalla 207 

Conary: He laid himself on the bed. But he 
said he would not be long in it. He bade me waken 
him. He said he would be going out later in the 
night. 

Constable: So he did go out later, and did the 
crime. I was full sure of that. 

Darcy: It is hard for me to give up trust in 
him. He to have turned against me, I will never 
have faith in any other man in the living world. 

Constable: He will give you his own account 
now of himself. 

Scarry: {Coming in between two policemen.) Will 
you tell me what is going on, Mr. Hubert, or if it is 
by your orders it is going on ? These peelers drag- 
ging me here and there! First they would not 
give me leave to come to you, and now they are 
shoving me in, the same as a thief on the road! 
(To Policeman.) Leave go your hold! 

Constable: Keep a quiet mouth now and 
.behave yourself ! 

Scarry: What call have you to be putting 
orders on me? It is Mr. Darcy is my master. I 
take orders from no other one. 

ConstaUe: It is likely you'll give heed to my 
orders from this out ! 

Scarry: Let you keep that thought for robbers 
and law-breakers! I'm not one of that class! I 



A ;V. 



208 Shanwalla 

never gave a summons or got a summons or gave 
my oath in a court ! 

Constable: It is not with a court but with a 
gaol you will be making acquaintance this night ! 

Scarry: Divil a fear of me! Whatever you 
have against me or make out against me, it is Mr. 
Darcy is well able to bring a man from the gallows ! 

Darcy: You need expect no help from me, 
Scarry, if the grave was there open before you ! 

Scarry: What in the world wide ! What at all 
is it you have against me, Mr. Hubert? 

Darcy: You will know that at the Assizes when 
you will be brought before the judge. 

Scarry: Tell me out what it is, and I'll show 
you I am clear from blame ! 

Darcy: You'll show me! I would not believe 
one word coming out of your mouth ! 

Constable: There's no use talking. We know 
what way you passed the night before the race. 

Scarry: Is that it now? Is that what has put 
you out, sir? You are vexed I did not come to 
mind the horse. It is very sharp blame you are 
putting on me for that ! 

Darcy: You need not try to put a face upon it ! 
You cannot come around me now that I have 
knowledge of what you are ! 



Shanwalla 209 

Scarry: I had a right to have come, and you 
uneasy as you were. 

Darcy: That's not it, I tell you! 

Scarry: I told you I thought to come . . . 
and that I was racked and tormented . . . and 
maybe I had a drop taken . . . and sleep came 
upon ine. 

Darcy: I wish to God you had stopped in your 
sleep ! 

Scarry: I give you my oath, I'll never quit your 
yard again but to be minding your business night 
and day. 

Darcy: You'll never be helper or head lad 
again in any stable I may own. 

Scarry: That is hard judgment when all I did 
was to drowse awhile. 

Darcy: It is not your drowsing and sleeping 
goes against you ! It is the deed you went out for 
after your rising up ! 

Scarry: What way did you know I went out? 

Constable: There now, he has allowed it. 

Scarry: I never denied it. 

Constable: What time now did you go out ? 

Scarry: It seemed to me like the dead hour of 
darkness, but it might not be so far out in the night. 
14 



210 Shanwalla 

Constable: What brought you out at all? 

Scarry: I was troublesome in the mind. 

Constable: You came then to Mr. Darcy's 
stables. 

Scarry: No, it was not this side I came, but 
out across the meadows to the north. 

Darcy: Speak out. Don't drag this thing on 
for ever. 

Scarry: It was to the old church of Eser- 
kelly I went, to the side of Bride my wife's 
grave. 

Constable: You can maybe bring witness to 
that? 

Scarry: Who would I bring? There was no 
one in it, unless God, and the dead underneath. 

Constable: What did you go doing there ? 

Scarry: Asking her forgiveness I was if ever I 
was anyway unkind, and saying prayers for the 
repose of her soul. 

Constable: {To Darcy.) This seems to be a 
humbugging story, sir, made up to get at your soft 
side, the way you will get him off. 

O'Malley: Ah, what getting off! He said one 
time he was asleep and he says now he was ram- 
bling the fields. 



Shanwalla 211 

Brogan: Let him tell that story to the birds of 
the air, for there is no one on the face of the earth 
will believe it. 

Scarry: {Seeing them for the first time.) Is it 
you yourself, you red rogue, is at the bottom of 
this mischief? I should have known that where 
there was bad work you would be in it, yourself 
and your comrade schemer! (To Darcy.) They 
are two that would swear away a man's life for a 
farthing candle! There is no nature in them! 
They are two would think no more of giving false 
witness than of giving a blow from a pipe. Tell 
that story to the birds of the air is it ! I will and 
to the magistrate that is my master ! 

Brogan: He gave little belief to all you told 
him up to this. 

Scarry: I have more to tell and maybe he will 
believe it ! 

Brogan: You have nothing to tell but what will 
bring your own head into the loop ! 

Scarry: Maybe it's your own head it will bring 
into it ! 

Brogan: Do your best so, and see will your lies 
serve you. 

Scarry: What brought you into the house that 
night? Why did you waken me? What did you 



212 Shanwalla 

ask of me? Was it to come along with you to 
Daroy's stable? 

Brogan: Stop your slandering mouth ! 

Darcy: Maybe there is something in it. 

Brogan: I say this man has made up this false 
witness and this story because we have knowledge 
of what would hang him twice over, and we being 
willing to tell it out ! 

Scarry: You have nothing to tell against me, 
if it is not that for one half hour, God forgive me! 
I consented to your wicked plan. 

Brogan: What I have to say I would sooner 
not say, because it concerns her that was near in 
blood to me, if she was mixed in marriage with 
yourself. 

Scarry: Keep your tongue off her, you villain ! 
Have some shame in you ! 

Brogan: (To Darcy.) Have I leave to speak? 

Darcy: Go on. 

Scarry: No! It would not be for honour her 
name to be spoken out of your false mouth, you that 
are a disgrace to the world! I know what you 
have in your wicked mind, and what when I was 
mad and crazed with trouble you made me give 
credit to for one minute only! I declare to 



Shanwalla 213 

heaven that if you say it in this place it will be the 
last lie in your throat ! 

Darcy: {To Brogan.) Speak out. 

Brogan: It is loth I am to do that, and I 
would not, without that I am forced by your 
honour's commands and this man's treachery. I 
know and I tell you out, it was he himself that 
made away with his wife ! 

Scarry: My God Almighty! {Stumbles and 
holds a chair.) 

Brogan: Look, sir, at the way she died! Gone 
in the snap of a finger. Well as she was that you 
would take a lease of her life, as supple walking as 
a young girl. What was it happened her? Is 
it that the ladder was settled in a way it would 
go from under her, and to slip on a slippy flag, the 
way she would be quiet and dumb and could not 
hold to her word and tell out to her master that 
it was Lawrence Scarry himself had engaged for 
money to put injury on the thing was in his 
charge ! 

Scarry: Let me out till I'll choke him! 

Brogan: Search your mind, sir, did she say 
she had something to lay before you! Was it he 
sent her out of the door? Was it he himself 
brought her in dead? Put away she was, before 
she could give out that word. 



214 Shanwalla 

Darcy: {To Scarry.) You understand what he 
is saying. What answer have you ? 

Scarry: The twists and tricks of a serpent he 
has! Didn't I speak before and what did it serve 
me. {Bride comes in and stays near door) . 

Darcy: {Getting up) The case looks bad and 
black. It has gone beyond me. {He looks at Con- 
stable's notes; the others whisper together.) 

Bride: {Coming to Canary.) Can you hear me 
what I say, Owen Conary? 

Canary: I do hear you and know your voice, 
indeed. 

2nd Policeman: (Touching his shoulder.) No 
speaking now. 

Bride: But there is great need for us to talk 
together. We must have leave to do that. {Turns 
and stands a moment near door.) 

A Boy: {Coming to door.) The horses are get- 
ting uneasy in the stable, let Lawrence Scarry come 
and quiet them down. {Larry starts up.) 

Darcy: No, not you. Never again! {Scarry 
sits down with head in hands. Darcy goes out, 
police, Brogan, and O'Malley follow him. Girls 
go to window and whisper, looking out. Bride comes 
to Conary.) 

Bride : Here I am now that you may question me. 



Shan walla 215 

Conary: I will do that, and I give great praise 
to God that sent you back to me. For I am in 
no dread of you this time. 

Bride: You need be in no dread of me, indeed; 
and it is to save my man I am come, for he is at the 
rib end of the web, and no woof to be got, and not 
one to save him without your help and my own. 

Conary: Answer me and tell me now what is to 
be done for him, and what way can he stand up 
to the judge, and he it may be going to his hanging 
tomorrow? 

Bride: I am come here to stand between him- 
self and his ill-wishers, and the man that put the 
curse of misfortune upon him. 

Conary: Do that, for he is the worst God ever 
created, and it is bad is his behaviour and you 
could not beat upon his cunning. And it is a great 
wonder the Lord to allow all the villainy is in the 
world. And that they may meet with all they 
deserve at this time, and in the cold hell that is 
before them. 

Bride: Let you not call out a judgment against 
them, but let you leave them to the Almighty ; and 
I myself never will put my curse on them ; but that 
He Himself may change everyone for the best ! 

Conary: Stretch out now and give aid to the 
boy that had the sea of the world's troubles over 



2i6 Shanwalla 

him, since you yourself went from him to the other 
side, and that was a boy did not deserve it from 
God or man. 

Bride: I will do that. For he was fair and 
honest until the man that is his red enemy put a 
net around him with lying words, and he broke 
away from it after. And he was a kind man to me, 
for a headstrong man, while I was with him, and 
I liked him well. Do now my bidding and I will 
leave you my blessing by day and by night, in the 
light and in the darkness, for from this out I will 
be free from the world's trouble and at peace. 

Canary: I will do your bidding, indeed. And it 
is not lonesome I will be from this out, but I to be 
going the long road it will be as if I did not belong 
to the world at all ; for it seemed to me the time I 
looked at you, the heavens to have opened then and 
there! {They go up to corner. She is seen to he 
speaking to him. Presently they both go out) 

1st Girl: {Leaving window and coming down 
stage.) They're coming back now from the stables. 

2nd Girl: {Looking at Scarry who still sits with 
head sunk on arms.) Would you ever think now 
Lawrence Scarry to be such a terrible wicked man, 
to kill the poor woman stone-dead ! 

1st Girl: Darcy to turn against him — what will 
it be when he will come before the Judge of Assize 
and all the counsellors of the Crown? 



Shanwalla 217 

2nd Girl: I thought it was but for a bit of 
funning Pat O'Malley bade us make up the story 
about him being in the house that night. Sure, 
what way would I know if he was in it at all ? And 
now they'll be putting it in the newspapers and all 
around the world. 

1st Girl: Whether or no, you cannot go back 
from it now . Well , I declare , I ' d near pity the poor 
man if it was not for the bad deed he has done. 
{Darcy, Constable and the rest come in.) 

Constable: {To Scarry.) Come over here now 
and hear what Mr. Darcy has to say. 

Darcy: There is nothing for me to do but to 
commit you to gaol. 

Scarry: Is it that you give belief to what was 
said? 

Darcy: God knows I would give the half of 
my estate to have the same thought of you I had 
yesterday. You never would hear a sharp word 
from me again. But what stand can you make 
against the Judge, where I must cast you off, that 
was your near friend? 

Scarry: My mind is as if gone blind. I can 
keep no thought in my head. This is surely the 
crossest day that ever went over me. I can make 
no stand against such treachery. 



2i8 Shanwalla 

Canary: (Coming forward.) Will I get leave to 
say one word . . . ? A message I am after being 
given . . . 

Darcy: Have you anything new to tell ? 

Conary: A message I am after being given for 
Patrick O'Malley. 

Darcy: Has it anything to do with this case? 

Conary: Your honour will know that. I am 
bidden to tell you, Pat O'Malley, to give up now 
the thing that is in your hand, that is the sign 
and the token of your treachery, and of the deed 
you have joined in and that you have done. 

O'Malley: (Taking his hand from his breast where 
he had thrust it.) There is nothing in it. 

Conary: Let those that have eyesight say if 
there is ! (Constable goes over to O'Malley.) 

O'Malley: (Flinging a letter at Brogan.) It is 
you betrayed me ! It is you gave it to me ! There 
is no one had knowledge of it only yourself. (Con- 
stable takes up and gives paper to Darcy.) 

Darcy: (Reading.) It is a promise to pay £50 
to him so soon as Inchy races will be over, if so be 
the horse Shanwalla will not have been able to 
make a start. 

O'Malley: It was poverty brought me to it, 
and the children rising around me. 



Shanwalla 219 

Brogan: Keep your tongue quiet, you fool ! 

Canary: I hear your voice, James Brogan. 
I am not without a message to yourself. 

Brogan: Some lie you have made up. Who is 
there in the living world would go send me a 
message in this place? 

Canary: You will know who sent it, hearing it. 
It was given to me but now. 

Brogan: There was no one came in or went 
out. I swear to that. 

Canary: It failed you to see her; but she was 
here. 

Brogan: (Uneasily.) She . . . What are you 
saying ? What are you talking about ? 

Canary: She gave me this message : ' ' Were you 
not a foolish man, James Brogan, to knock the 
ladder from under me, and I but just after saying 
to you that it is hard to quench life!" 

Brogan: She did not — she could not 

Canary: You know well who it was spoke that 
word. Have a care ! She is maybe not far from 
you. 

Brogan: {Falling on his knees and looking at 
place she had stood.) I give my faith and my 
solemn oath, Bride, that the time I got wild and 
faced you I never thought to leave a hand on you, 



220 Shanwalla 

to kill you, but only to put fear on you, the way 
you would not tell on me, and but to quiet you 
for a while! 

Darcy: Do you understand what you are say- 
ing? 

Brogan: ''Living or dead I'll be against you," 
you said, and I threatening to do injury to your 
man. And if it was for my own profit I did injury 
to what he had in charge, it is for your own sake 
I put a revenge on him and strove to destroy him 
and to bring him down! {Holds out his arms 
towards door.) Are you gone from me now and 
for ever ! Oh, Bride, you were always against me, 
and you are against me yet, and it is through you I 
will give myself up to the Judge and will go to my 
punishment as it is well I have earned it! {The 
two policemen stand at each side of him as he stands 
up, and lead him and O'M alley to door.) 

Canary: {To Scarry.) Surely God has some 
great hand in you, giving leave to the woman to 
keep her promise for your help. And didn't she 
behave well, coming challenging through myself 
your enemies in the court, the way you got over 
them all, and you so near your last goal! 

Scarry: Through you is it ? Stop your raving. 
She to have left her standing in Heaven it is not 
with you she would have come speaking, or with 
any one at all only myself I 



Shanwalla 221 

Darcy: It is a good thought he had facing them. 
But it's no wonder he to be apt at riddles, there is 
great wit and great wisdom in the blind. And 
it's little he could have done for you, Larry, but 
for knowing that I myself was on your side. 

Constable: (To the two Policemen.) I'm ftill 
sure the beggar was in league with them and knew 
their secrets, and turned on them and betrayed 
them for his own safety, seeing me searching out 
the matter to the root. 

2nd Policeman: I never heard in my time a 
spirit to give any aid to the law or to the police. 

1st Policeman: There's nothing in the world 
more ignorant then to give any belief to ghosts. I 
am walking the world these twenty years, and 
never met anything worse than myself ! 



NOTES TO SHANWALLA 

Some time ago I was looking through many stories 
told me on our countryside and given by me later in 
Visions and Beliefs, bearing witness to the con- 
sciousness of the presence of the dead, of spirits 
invisible, for here in Connacht there is no doubt as 
to the continuance of life after death; the Spirit wan- 
ders for a while in that intermediate region to which 
mystics and theologians have given various names. 
But I felt doubtful as to using them; I hesitated to 
put them before an audience used to close reasoning 
and the presentation of proved facts. I feared they 
might be found inconclusive, trivial, meaningless. 
But it happened the next day as I was driving to 
church with one dear to me and now gone from me we 
were talking of kindred matters and he said, "I have 
no doubt at all there will be a return to intuition as in 
primitive days. Reason took its place, and reason 
was seized on with passion by the Greeks as a new 
force to be used in every possible field and way. But 
now it has gone as far as it can go, it has ceased to 
interest, to satisfy; it is to intuition we must turn for 
new discoveries." 

I said then to myself that my countryside tales are 
justified. These people of lonely bogs and hillsides 
have still their intuition, their sensitiveness to the 

222 



Shanwalla 223 

unseen; they do not reason about it, they accept it as 
simply as they do the sighing of the west wind or the 
colour of the sky. I beHeve that what they feel and 
relate is perhaps of as great importance to that in us 
which is lasting, as the tested results of men of science 
examining into psychic things. For none have yet 
been certainly aware of much more than shadows upon 
a veil, vague, intangible, yet making the certainty 
clearer every day that when the veil is rent for us at 
our passing away, or made thinner for us during our 
stay in this world, it is not death but life that is to be 
discovered beyond it. 

But as to proof of the return, ''How shall they 
believe if one rose from the dead?" When I was 
working at this play, where the spirit of the wife 
returns, imperceptible indeed to the Court where she 
gives her message, yet able to give it and so to save 
her man, reason told me that all in that Court should be 
convinced, that Magistrate and husband and officials 
would go on their knees in prayer, or call out their 
belief in this triumph of one of ''the cloud of Wit- 
nesses." But when it came to writing the scene, I 
suppose it was either intuition or experience that took 
the pen and brought it to its present end. 

I was talking in a Venice salon one evening with a 
well-known EngHsh artist and a German Admiral. 
The artist told us she had once been dining in Kensing- 
ton Palace with a Royal Princess, and after dinner as 
they were going upstairs she was left alone for a mo- 
ment and a clear voice said from below, ' ' Who is there ? ' ' 



224 Shanwalla 

She was surprised at anyone thus calling out in such a 
place, and the Princess came running back, looking 
scared, and said "Did you hear anything?" **And 
when I told her, the Princess said, *Yes, others have 
heard it too; it is George the IVth.'" This happened 
in Kensington Palace, and the spirit was that of 
a King. But the German Admiral, the Reasoner, 
said "Ach, we hear sthories of ghosts, and they are 
got up by people that want to keep the place for 
shmuggling!" 



THE WRENS 



IS 225 



Persons 

The Porter 
Kirwan's Servant 
Castlereagh's Servant 
William Hevenor 



, Strolling Singers 
Margy Hevenor ' 



226 



THE WRENS 

Time: January 22nd, 1799. 

Scene: Outside House of Commons, Dublin. Porter 
at top of steps. Kir wan' s servant arriving. 

Kirwan's Servant: Fine morning. 

Porter: Middling ; for January. 

Kirwan's Servant: Are they making speeches 
yet? 

Porter: They are. Arguing and debating, 
Lords and Commons, through night and through 
dawn, till they have the world talked upside down. 

Kirwan's Servant: I suppose nearly the most 
of them is in it? 

Porter: What there isn't of them you wouldn't 
miss out of it, unless it might be your own master, 
Mr. Kir wan. 

Kirwan's Servant: He quitted the House after 
his big speech. He laid down to them a good line 
of talk. 

Porter: He got over all his enemies in that 
speech. 

227 



228 The Wrens 

Kirwan's Servant: He did, and the enemies of 
Ireland. They are as good as put down altogether. 
He'll be coming back in a while's time. 

Porter: Why wouldn't he, and the vote to be 
taken yet? He's a man that has no mix in him. 

Kirwan's Servant: Around in the attorney's 
ojBfice he is, writing out documents to go by mes- 
sengers to England so soon as the bill will be 
thrown out. He bade me to go call him at the 
time the vote will be coming on. 

Porter: It will not be long till that time. The 
speeches should be at their last goal. 

Kirwan's Servant: {Going to door.) I'll take my 
station here. So soon as they'll start to clap the 
bell I'll go warn him. Though it's likely his one 
vote won't be hardly needed, with all that will be 
against the bill. 

Porter. Maybe so. It's hard say. It being to 
be it will be. 

Kirwan's Servant: There is no man is honest 
and is straight but will give his voice against it. 

Porter: It's hard know what might happen 
from when we get up in the morning to when we 
go to bed at night ; or half that time. 

Kirwan's Servant: Here is Lord Castlereagh's 
servant coming to gather news for his master — 



The Wrens 229 

my black curse on him — that is one of the old boy's 
comrades ! 

Castlereagh' s Servant: {Coming in.) Fine day ! 

Kirwan's Servant: It will be a better day inside 
an hour's space, when the bill for the Union with 
England will be defeated and thrown out. My 
joy go with it in a bottle of moss! If it never 
comes back it is no great loss ! 

Castlereagh' s Servant: If it is it will be because 
there's more fools than wise men within the walls 
of that house. 

Kirwan's Servant: It is what you're thinking 
that your master has the whole county bought. 
But let me tell you that he has not. It would take 
a holy lot to do that ! 

Castlereagh's Servant: There is no person hav- 
ing sense but would wish to be within the Empire 
of England. 

Kirwan's Servant: He would not, unless he 
would come of a bad tribe and a bad family, and 
would be looking for a pension for his vote. 

Porter: It might be so; Money does every- 
thing in the worst possible way. 

Castlereagh's Servant: {To Porter.) You'll be apt 
to lose your own job of standing on the thrassel of 
that door, and the Parliament to be housed over 



230 The Wrens 

in London. It would be best for you while you 
have time shift over to our side. {Shows him a 
purse and shakes it.) 

Porter: I don't know. Someway foreign money 
doesn't go far. 

Kirwan's Servant: {Sarcastically.) What will 
he divide on you so ? Why wouldn't you wish to 
be made a Lord? Or ask a County Court judge- 
ship, and your wife to be flying hats and feathers. 
Have you any knowledge of the law? 

Porter: More than the most of them! I am 
well able to administer an oath. 

Castlereagh's Servant to Kirwan's: There is no 
one against the bill but some that are like your- 
selves not having learning and that don't travel. 

Kirwan's Servant: There are, and noble and 
high-blooded people are against it! Languaged 
people that cati turn history to their own hand ! 

Porter: They might not. To be supple with 
the tongue is not all. 

Kirwan's Servant: I tell you the most thing in 
the mighty world could not save that bill from 
being thrown out and refused ! 

Porter: It's hard say. There was no great 
strength in the wrens that destroyed Ireland the 
time they went picking crumbs on a drum, and 
wakened up the army of the Danes. 



The Wrens 231 

Kirwan's Servant: And what sort is it you are 
thinking will destroy the liberties of Ireland this 
day? Is it that couple of raggedy strollers are 
disputing along the side path of the Green? 
{Enter Hevenor and Margy, disputing.) 

Margy: (Pushing Hevenor.) Bad cess to you 
bringing me foraging around, running and wander- 
ing, by roads and cross roads, by hedges and by 
walls, the cold and the slashing rain upon me! 
There's no stay in you but as if you were a wild 
duck. From country to country it goes. 

Hevenor: Well for me if I had its wings! To 
stop in the one place with your talk at me and your 
prating, I'd as soon be in the body of a gaol! 

Margy: I to have nothing of my own, or a 
skirt that would bring me to the church, no more 
than a dog or a sow ! 

Hevenor: That is hes you are telling and you 
owning by marriage a good man that is myself! 

Margy: I could have had great marriages if I 
didn't choose you, and many wondered at me! 

Hevenor: Be easy now! It's too much you 
have to say. It would take twenty to keep you 
in chat ! 

Margy: And I dreaming the day I wed with 
you of little houses as white as snow, and a bunch 
of keys in my hand ! 



232 The Wrens 

Hevenor: Ah, you're entirely too lavish in talk. 

Margy: My old fathers that had stock and 
land, and the bacon over their head. And what 
am I myself but a holy show by the side of the 
road? To bring me singing through the streets, 
that is the last thing of all. God help the poor! 
The rich can rob around. 

Hevenor: Hold your whisht, can't you? There 
is grand people up at that door. 

^ k Margy: Enghsh they should be by the rich 
clothes of them. They are your business. Let 
you word out a Government song. 

Hevenor: {Sings) 

A song for Britain and her sons, 

A song of harmony, 

And now and ever let it breathe 

Of truth and loyalty. 

Its theme the same where'er we be, 

Her palace isle we'll sing, 

The laurels and the victory 

Of Britain and the King ! 

Castlereagh's Servant: That's very good! The 
whole country is turning to join with Britain, the 
hungry as well as the high up. 

Kirwan's Servant: (Threatening Hevenor.) Get 
out of this with your bawling, if it fails you to 
sing straight and sing honest ! 



The Wrens 233 

Hevenor: I am singing honest. 

KirwarCs Servant: You are not, but for profit 
and gain. 

Hevenor: Amn't I a Catholic? Why wouldn't 
I go with the Bishops and the Clergy? 

Castlereagh's Servant: They have sense, coming 
to our side. 

Hevenor: Sure the Government has them 
promised that the Parliament to change over to 
London, there'll be Catholic Emancipation on the 
minute ! 

Kirwan's Servant: I never could believe in lies ! 

Hevenor: That's my hearing of the thing. 

Kirwan's Servant: I wouldn't believe it from 
the Pope! 

Margy: That's what I do be telling him myself 
— England is all promise and no pay. 

Hevenor: What did my own Bishop put out 
down in Mayo? "Let us join," says he, ''with 
the British," says he, ''that are the wisest, the 
freest and the happiest people on the whole face of 
the earth!" 

Margy: Ah, he is but in dread of corner boys 
like yourself joining strikes and setting themselves 
up against the Pope the same as those lads out in 
France. 



234 The Wrens 

Hevenor: "For self and clergy," says he, "we 
will stand and fall with the British." 

Margy: What will stand will be on the other 
side, and what will fall will be on this side ! It is 
England will get the cream and leave us the broken 
milk. 

Hevenor: No, but we being paired and wedded 
with the Sassenach, we'll be full and easy like 
themselves. 

Margy: To be banishing away reared people 
to be playing skittle-alley out in London! That 
will give the country no fair play. 

Hevenor: Showing kindness and sharing wealth 
the same as the children of one house ! 

Margy: What a fool I am! Doesn't the world 
know the English to be hard and wicked and the 
Irish fair and easy? It is to turn Dublin you 
would to be but a little village of houses? 

Hevenor: Women have no intellect to give out 
such things ; great voice and little head ! 

Margy: I would not to gain the big world 
entirely give leave to the Parliament to shift over 
out of this so much as nine lengths of a cow's tail! 
London is entirely too thronged. As many people 
as you'd see wheat in a field. How would we get 
our own handling and our way? 



The Wrens 235 

Hevenor: It's a bad way we are getting up to 

this! 

Margy: A great wonder the Lord to stand the 
villainy is in it ! The English are the worst people 
under the rising sun. With what sort is it you are 
wishful to mingle and join, after God Himself 
putting out His hand to banish snakes and serpents 
out of Ireland? 

Hevenor: There is plenty of that class in it yet 
ready to ate one another. 

Margy: We might ate one another at some 
times, but they'd ate the whole of us! 

Hevenor: Too much of quarrelling and slander- 
ing.. ' It is time for us live in peace. 

Margy: Ah, for ten thousand years Ireland 
was fighting and what would ail her to stop at this 
time? 

Hevenor: It is the power of England will put 
down your pride, and the law of the Union passed. 

Margy: If they do pass it no one would be 
forced to obey it. It is a good man said that. 

Hevenor: Them that said it will be put down as 
rebels. 

Margy: It is rebels in good clothes will be put 
down that time in place of rebels in frieze. It is 
all rebels we'll be together, the Lord be praised! 



236 The Wrens 

I tell you I to suckle 20,000 sons, I'd rear them the 
same as Hannibal ! 

Kirwan's Servant: Good woman! That is 
right talk! 

Hevenor: {To Castlereagh' s Servant.) It is eman- 
cipation she begrudges us, and we to be equal with 
the Protestants. 

Margy: {To Kirwan's Servant.) All the laws 
of England would not make you the equal of my- 
self! I never will give in to be reduced to a 
Catholic ! 

Hevenor: {To Castlereagh's Servant.) Isn't she 
the great Protestant with her high notions? 

Margy: If I am, it's in the shadow of a Protes- 
tant house I was reared, and a good house. Wasn't 
my grandmother hen-woman to the Duke of 
Leinster? God be with my poor Lord Edward, 
the best that ever ate the world's bread! It's 
often she roasted an egg in the ashes for him and 
he in his young age. It is for himself she's wearing 
a black ribbon on this day, tied around the frill 
of her cap. It's myself will sing him through the 
three parishes. 
{Sings.) 
We'll arm ourselves for God is good and blesses 

them who lean 
On their brave hearts and not upon an earthly 

king or queen; 



The Wrens 237 

And freely as we lift our hands we vow our blood to 

shed 
Till in some day to come the green will flutter o'er 

the red ! 

Kirwan's Servant: More power to you, Ma'am ! 
That every day may thrive with you ! {Gives money.) 

Hevenor: {To Castlereagh's Servant.) Give my- 
self some little coin into my hand, your honour, 
and I'll give out a good verse for the Union. 
{Sings.) 

*' The laurels and the victories 
Of Britain and the King; " 

Castlereagh's Servant: I'll do that much for you. 
{Puts hand in pocket and takes out money.) 

Margy: {Pushing back his hand.) Do not give 
it to himself but to me ! Ever3rthing he will handle 
he will drink it. 

Hevenor: I'm no good when I'm in my sense 
and in my mind. But when I have a drop taken, 
it's then I will bring out the songs. 

Margy: He had enough taken yesterday to 
last him to the world's end! Going to public 
houses in company does not answer him. The 
drink does but drive out his wits. 

Hevenor: It's to put a good mouth on herself 
she says that. She pretends to be proud, and 
reflects on me. 



238 The Wrens 

Margy: When they get themselves into a habit 
it is hard for them get out of it after ! 

Hevenor: That you may never have the price 
of your shroud! That one would begrudge so 
much as bog water out of a tea-cup. 

Margy: Whatever class of drink he took last 
night, what way did he get the price of it but to 
bring away and to put in pawn my stuffed pin- 
cushion. When I cast it up to him after he was 
breaking his heart laughing. 

Hevenor: I did but lighten her travelling load! 

Margy: My pincushion I got from the minis- 
ter's wife and I a child rising up. The first little 
stick of furniture ever I had, and I bringing it 
from road to road till such time as I'll get a little 
table to put it on, and a room would hold the table, 
and the bed ; and a little kitchen along with it, the 
way I'd be in Heaven having a little place of my 
own. 

H-evenor: You'll never be in Heaven or within 
fifteen mile of it ! 

Margy: So much as the image of a farthing he 
never leaves it in my hand. Give him the pledge 
against drink. That's the only best thing to do. 
He is a young fellow that has no understanding. 

Hevenor: That the Almighty may make you a 
worthy woman ! 



The Wrens 239 

Margy: So wild and arch as he is he's no good 
for the world only drinking. You to give him a 
pint he'd ask to go inside in the barrel. 

Hevenor: So stubborn as you are ! Would you 
downf ace me ! 

{Hevenor sheltering behind Castlereagh' s Ser- 
vant, Margy trying to get at him.) 

Margy: To make a trade of it he does. He'll 
drink the devil into him. 

Hevenor: She is such a terrible barge you 
couldn't stand against her. (To Castlereagh' s Ser- 
vant.) Give me the bit of silver in my hand and 
I'll go! 

Margy: Do not till such time as he will have 
the pledge taken ! 

Castlereagh's Servant: Will you take it so ? 

Hevenor: I'm too well pledged before this, 
being pledged to herself ! 

CastlereagWs Servant: Take it now. I '11 get you 
good custom for your songs. You'll be of use to 
me, coaxing and turning rebels to the side of my 
master. 

Kirwan's Servant: Don't mind doing that, but 
take the oath against drink and live peaceful with 
the good woman at your side. 

Hevenor: It is likely it would fail me to hold to it. 



240 The Wrens 

Castlereagh's Servant: Take it to St. Bridget's 
Day, that is but nine days from this. 

Hevenor: I would feel that much time too long 
in passing. 

Kirwan's Servant: {Sneeringly .) Take it so till 
the Union bill will be thrown out, and that will be 
inside of a few hours. 

Margy: That's no use! That much is not 
worth while. 

Hevenor: It will be worth while if I think it to 
be worth while. 

Margy: I'd as lief he not to take it at all. 

Hevenor: In troth I'll take it if I have a mind 
to take it. 

CastlereagWs Servant: ( To Porter.) Give him the 
oath as you are able, and make an end of it. 

Porter: Wait till I '11 get the book. (Goes in at door.) 

Hevenor: I don't know. I never took a book 
in my hand to swear this or that. 

Margy: It's best for you wait till such time as 
you'll get a fright, or a vision of the bones of death, 
and take the oath in earnest. 

Porter: {Coming out.) Kiss the book. 

Hevenor: Give it here to me! {Snatches and 
kisses it.) 



The Wrens 241 

Porter: Word this now after me. {Hevenor 
repeats it after him.) ''I will touch no drop of 
drink, or anything you'd call drink, until such 
time as the Union bill now within in that house 
will be thrown out and rejected and beat! So 
help me God ! ' ' {Takes book back into house.) 

Hevenor: I took it now in spite of you. Any 
man to offer me a glass of whiskey I'd sooner he to 
give me a clout on the head ! 

Castlereagh's Servant: Where now is the song? 

Hevenor: (Sings.) 
''United with Britain may Erin for ever 

In commerce, in arts, and in science advance; 
United with Britain may Ireland for ever 

Live mighty and free, independent of France !" 

Margy: {To Kirwan's Servant.) It's much that 
he does not pull down that green flag, and it having 
King David's harp on it and the picture of an 
angel on its front ! 

Hevenor: Give me the bit of silver in my hand 
now, your honour, where I have it well earned. 

Castlereagh's Servant: There it is for you. 

Hevenor: That's a valiant lot of money! That 
you may reign long ! 

Castlereagh' s Servant: Follow on now with that 
song. 
16 



242 The Wrens 

Hevenor: {Tries and clears throat.) Checking 
that one and her arguments has put a sort of a 
foggy mist in my throat. I must go banish it with 
a small drop of porter. 

Margy: Porter ! You have no leave to touch 
that, and you having the pledge taken. 

Hevenor: Ah, won't the bill be cast out before 
I will get to the drink house ? 

CastlereagWs Servant: It might not. 

Hevenor: {Pointing to Kirwan's Servant.) That 
one has it promised me it will. 

Castlereagh' s Servant: Little he knows. It 
might never be thrown out at all. 

Kirwan's Servant: 1 tell you it will be ! 

Castlereagh' s Servant: There is bets on it going 
through. 

Kirwan's Servant: Wait till you'll see! I'll 
bet you a golden guinea it is out it will go ! 

Hevenor: And must I keep from the drink that 
not to happen? 

CastlereagW s Servant: You took that oath, sure 
enough. You cannot rise out of it now. 

Hevenor: So I did, God forgive me. {Turns to 
Margy.) You are the worst head to a man ever I 
saw, giving me leave to do that ! 



The Wrens 243 

Margy: You have the money in your hand to 
lay out in some better way. 

Hevenor: I wouldn't handle a halfpenny be- 
longing to him, and I as wise then as I am now! 
Where is the use of it and it not bringing me my 
heart's desire? 

Margy: It will maybe not rise you out of your 
senses this time ! 

Hevenor: I to be bare empty I would say 
nothing, but wealth to be in my hand and there to 
be no frolic or pleasure in it, it is that is killing me 
entirely. 

CastlereagW s Servant: It's an enemy to himself 
that will turn back to drink that is the misfortune 
of all. 

Hevenor: Silver crowns in my hand, and I 
maybe to lay myself down this night as innocent 
and as timid as a coney of the rocks, never felt 
the power of still-whiskey ! 

Margy: He'll be turning to it again, and the 
pledge loosened, as sure as there's folly in a 
fool. 

Hevenor: If I had but thought to take my fill 
before they knocked a promise out of me. Music 
that would be going a-through me, and a poet's 
wreath around my head! Kindness in my heart 



244 The Wrens 

that I would forgive the whole world, and it after 
thrusting me from its door ! 

Margy: It is fighting it would be more apt to 
leave you. 

Hevenor: It might — the drink is very lively. 
Attacking colour sergeants and officers and gener- 
als! And I having but a little wattle of a stick 
and they with all the guns of Buonaparty ! It is to 
hold the gap of battle I would the same as Brian 
Boru! (Sings.) 

*'0n Clontarf he like a lion fell, thousands plunged 
in their own gore ; 
I to be such a hero now I'd ask for nothing 
more." 

Kirwan^s Servant: Ah, what are you making 
such lamentations over. You have but to hold to 
your promise till the Bill is cast out and that time 
will be short. 

Hevenor: That it may be so ! 

CastlereagW s Servant: What's that you're say- 
ing? Sure you're on the side of the Union. 

Hevenor: I was, but I am not. I made another 
thought. 

Castlereagh' s Servant: Is it that you are for- 
getting about Emancipation ? 



The Wrens 245 

Hevenor: I am not. It is of my own emancipa- 
tion I am thinking. 

Castlereagh' s Servant: Is it a turncoat you 
are? 

Hevenor: I amn't condemning anyone down, 
but I wouldn't give an inch of your toe for the man 
would let anything interfere with his own liberty. 

Castlereagh' s Servant: You rap ! You common 
rascal ! 

Hevenor: Haven't I myself to mind as well as 
another? As for Lords and Commons, before I 
will give in to neglect myself, they may die on the 
side of the road. 

Margy: . Ah, you tricker, to turn around for 
good or bad as quick as that ! It is I myself would 
not do a thing of the sort. To walk honest and 
walk pure is my way! {Sings.) 

*'I have a leg for a stocking, 
I have a foot for a shoe, 
I have a kiss for a croppy, 
And down with the orange and blue ! 
Out with Castlereagh and Pitt and the Union!" 

Castlereagh' s Servant: You fool of a woman! 
Don't you know the English bill to be cast out 
your man's pledge is swept along with it. 

Margy: I was forgetting that. 



246 The Wrens 

Castlereagh' s Servant: Pitt and the Government 
to get their way on this day, he is bound and tied 
to temperance and has the Hfe pledge taken. 

Margy: In earnest? 

Castlereagh' s Servant: A sober man and a quiet 
man at your side. 

Margy: And the Httle house I'd have? And 
the pincushion? 

CastlereagK s Servant: What's to hinder you? 

Margy: (Sings.) 

''I have a foot for a stocking, 

I have a leg for a shoe, 

I have a kick for a croppy, 

And up with the orange and blue ! " 
{A bell rings inside door, but none hear it.) 

Kirwan's Servant: {Shaking her.) That my 
curse may follow you? Shut your traitor mouth! 
A disgrace you are to the world ! 

Margy: Leave go of me! I have my own 
business to mind. 

Kirwan's Servant: You to renage that was call- 
ing out this very minute on our side ! 

Margy: At that time I had not understanding. 

Kirwan's Servant: To go join with them that 
would send Ireland to the slaughter! 



The Wrens 247 

Margy: It is not Ireland I have in charge. It 
is WiUiam Hevenor I have in charge. 

Kirwan's Servant: To go bring such a great 
stain on your name and you turning against the 
country's friends ! 

Margy: By my faith it's my own friend I have 
to think of, and not of the other breed! 

Kirwan's Servant: Can't you be loyal to 
Ireland that is your own country and your island? 

Margy: So I am loyal — to my man. Every- 
thing should be done beyond measure to mind him 
and to change him for the best. If I wouldn't be 
thanked by the world I might be thanked by God. 

Kirwan's Servant: A great wonder it is, Judas 
not to have been a woman ! 

Margy: If you had a hundred in family a hus- 
band is the nearest. Isn't it better to me Parlia- 
ments to go to wrack in the clouds than my man 
to go live blazing drunk ! (Sings.) 

**Then bumper your glasses, to George drink a 
health 
And give him peace, happiness, honour, and 
wealth!" 

Hevenor: What's that! Let you quit sounding out 
that song ! Is it that you are singing against myself ? 

Margy: If I am it's for your good. 



248 The Wrens 

Hevenor: It's I can sing against yourself so. 
(Sings.) 

' ' Oh the French are on the Sea, 
Says the Shan Van Vocht ! 
Oh the French are on the Sea, 

Says the Shan Van Vocht ! 
Oh the French are in the Bay, 
They'll be here without delay. 
And the orange will decay, 
Says the Shan Van Vocht!" 

Margy: {Putting hand on his mouth.) No, 
but hearken! (Sings.) 

"United with Britain may Erin for ever 

In commerce, in arts, and in science advance; 
United with Britain may Erin for ever 

Live mighty and free, independent of France !" 

Hevenor: (Breaking Jree and closing her mouth, 
sings.) 

''And their camp it shall be where, 

Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
,, Their camp it shall be where. 
Says the Shan Van Vocht. 
On the Curragh of Kildare, 
The boys they will be there 
With their pikes in good repair, 
Says the Shan Van Vocht!" 
(She throws her shawl over his mouth. They 
struggle with one another.) 



The Wrens 249 

Castlereagh^s Servant: I bet two to one on tha 
woman ! 

Kirwan's Servant: I will put all I have on the 
man. 

{A great cheering inside House. Porter 
comes out and they turn and see him.) 

Come over here. Where were you? If ever 
you lost sport you lost it today! 

Porter: Do you hear that shouting within in 
the House? 

Kirwan's Servant: What is it? What hap- 
pened? Is it time for the vote? 

Porter: The vote is after being taken. Where 
was your. master? 

Kirwan's Servant: I disremembered. I didn't 
call to him. Listening to these vagabonds — the 
curse of the country on them. I didn't feel the 
time passing. It cannot be the bill is thrown out ? 

Porter: It is gone through. 

Kirwan's Servant: Gone through! That was a 
holy crime. I thought it would never come to pass ! 

Porter: Your master, Kirwan, would have 
saved it. It was but got through by one vote. 

Kirwan's Servant: {Sitting down on step.) I 
have a great wrong done him, and all his sweat 
lost ! His heart will be thrashed with this. 



250 The Wrens 

Porter: It's no blame on you to be downcast. 
It's this House will be lonesome with nothing but 
its own pure walls. A pity it to be brought to an 
end when its hour was not spent. 

Castlereagh's Servant: And yourself to be left 
bird alone! 

{"Rule, Britannia,'' is played off. He takes 
down Green Flag and puts up Union 
Jack. More cheers inside; and groans 
from the street.) 

Margy: (ToHevenor.) Come on now out of this. 

Hevenor: I never enjoyed a worse day. There 
was nothing in it but was wrong. 

Margy: No, but the best day ever came before 
you. We'll have great comfort in the bye-and-bye 
and a roof to put over the child. You'll be run- 
ning down drink from this out, the same as the fox 
and the cherries. Give me now that money where 
you will not put it astray on me this time. We'll 
go get the little pincushion out of pawn ! 



Curtain. 



NOTES TO THE WRENS 

I wrote this what seems a long time ago, before the 
war, and in looking at it now I find it hard to get into 
the mood in which I wrote it. I had been reading the 
history of the passing of the Bill for the Union between 
Great Britain and Ireland, that now, in this year 
192 1 , seems likely to be undone. This is how its story 
is told in folk lore: — "As to the Union, it was bought 
with titles.- Look at the Binghams and the rest, they 
went to bed nothing, and rose up lords in the morning. 
The day it was passed. Lady Castlereagh was in the 
House of Parliament, and she turned three colours, 
and she said to her husband, 'You have passed your 
treaty, but you have sold your country.' He went 
and cut his throat after that. And it is what is said 
by the old people, there was no priest in Ireland but 
voted for it, the way they would get better rights, for 
it was only among poor persons they were going at that 
time. And it was but at the time of the Parliament 
leaving College Green they began to wear the Soutane 
that they wear now." 

Book history tells us that the Bill was passed on its 
first reading, on January 22, 1799, by only one vote; 

251 



252 The Wrens 

and my little play imagines the losing of a vote that 
would have at least made the numbers equal, through 
so slight a cause as a quarrel between two strolling 
vagabonds, that disturbs the attention of a servant 
from watching the moment to call his master, who 
would have cast his vote against the Bill. 

I see in some notes made before the writing that I 
had planned "a human comedy, the changing of sides 
of man and wife," and that if she helps to a victory for 
the over-Government "to bring away the Parliament 
out of Ireland" it is against her own conviction, and 
but to save her husband from drunkenness and gain a 
home for herself, and that in so doing it is likely she 
would be praised by moralists, but the common people 
would put their curse upon her and him as they have 
put it on the even less responsible Wrens that lost 
Ireland a victory through awakening the Danish 
sentinels by pecking at the crumbs upon their drums. 

Sometimes in making a plan for a play I set the 
scene in some other country that I may be sure the 
emotion displayed is not bounded by any neighbour- 
hood but is a universal one. And I see upon a forgot- 
ten stray page that the persons of the play in my mind 
were at one time an Athenian who is for the victory 
of his city and quarrels with his wife who belongs to 
Sparta. But he is too fond of the wine cup to be of 
much use to the one or the other side, and hearing that 
the Spartans are at the very gates of Athens he is 
persuaded to abstain from the juice of grape or barley 
until their victory is declared, and this he is assured, 
will be before nightfall. Then the wife turns round 



The Wrens 253 

and is all for Athens in order that his pledge may be 
forever kept, and so "they work against each other 
and upset each others plans and the plans of others, 
and she is said to be ' A good woman for her husband,' 
but others said she was a bad woman for the country." 

Of these plays The Image was written in 1909 — 
Shanwalla and The Wrens in 19 14 — Hanrahan's Oath 
in 191 5. They were all produced for the first time at 
the Abbey Theatre, December 27, 1921. The days 
in which I am correcting these pages are anxious ones, 
for our Treaty of Peace with England is yet in the 
balance, or as an old man has just said to me " on the 
toss of a button." 

And the Wrenboys when as always they came 
yesterday, St. Stephen's Day, gave but little of the old 
rhyme about that disaster remembered against the 
offending wren these thousand years, but sang in its 
place, a song of praise for Kevin Barry, the boy who 
was but last year "hanged in Mount joy Gaol, for 
Ireland's sake." 



Three Wonder Plays 

By 

Lady Gregory 

Author of "Seven Short Plays," etc. 

The Dragon j Aristotle's Bellows; The Jester. 
Of the first of these amusing new plays, a 
Dublin critic says: 

"Lady Gregory has written another really 
funny play in The Dragon, which is her best 
since The Workhouse Ward, It is the strang- 
est mixture of ancient and modem fun ever 
concocted, and only Lady Gregory could 
piece the thing together and make it 
*stageable.' I have not heard so much 
genuine hilarity at the Abbey for years. 
There are no dull moments in this strange 
conception." 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



Seven Short Plays 

By 
Lady Gregory 

Author of " New Comedies/* " Our Irish Theatre," etc 



The plays in this volume are the following: 
Spreading ihe News, Hyacinth Halvey, The 
Rising of the Moon, The Jackdaw, The Work-' 
house Ward, The Travelling Man, The Gaol Gatct 
The volume also contains music for the songs in 
the plays and notes explaining the conception of 
the plays. 

Among the three great exponents of the 
modern Celtic movement in Ireland, Lady 
Gregory holds an unusual place. It is she from 
whom came the chief historical impulse which 
resulted in the re-creation for the present 
generation of the elemental poetry of early 
Ireland, its wild disorders, its loves and hates- 
all the passionate light and shadow of that fierce 
and splendid race. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



Irish Folk-History Plays 

By 
LADY GREGORY 

Lady Gregory's plays ** never fail to do the one thing 
which we all demand from a play, which is not, as stupid 
people say, to amuse us (though Lady Gregory's plays 
are extremely amusing) , but to take us out of ourselves 
and out of London and out of the stuffy theater while we 
are listening to them." — George Bernard Shaw, 

"Among the three great exponents of the modern Celtic 
movement in Ireland, Lady Gregory holds an unusual 
place. It is she from whom came the chief historical im- 
pulse which resulted in the re-creation for the present 
generation of the elemental poetry of early Ireland, its 
wild disorders, its loves and hates— all the passionate 
light and shadow of that fierce and splendid race. 
. . . Should be read by all those who are interested in 
this most" unusual literary movement of modern times. 
Indeed they furnish a necessary complement to the over- 
fanciful pictures drawn by Mr. Yeats of the dim morning 
of Celtic Song." — Springfield Republican. 

"Lady Gregory has kept alive the tradition of Ireland 
as a laughing country. She surpasses the others in the 
quality of her comedy, however, not that she is more 
comic, but that she is more comprehensively true to life. 
Lady Gregory has gone to reality as to a cave of treasure. 
She is one of the discoverers of Ireland. Her genius, like 
Synge's, seems to have opened its eyes one day and seen 
spread below it the immense sea of Irish common speech, 
with its color, its laughter, and its music." — Nation. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 



New Comedies 

By 
LADY GREGORY 

The Bogie Men — ^The Full Moon — Coats 
Darner's Gold — McDonough's Wife 

8°. With Portrait in Photogravure 

The plays have been acted with great success 
by the Abbey Company, and have been highly 
extolled by appreciative audiences and an en- 
thusiastic press. They are distinguished by a 
humor of unchallenged originality. 

One of the plays in the collection, "Coats," 
depends for its plot upon the rivalry of two 
editors, each of whom has written an obituary 
notice of the other. The dialogue is full of 
crisp humor. "McDonough's Wife," another 
drama that appears in the volume, is based on a 
legend, and explains how a whole town rendered 
honor against its will. " The Bogie Men *' has as 
its underlying situation an amusing misunder- 
standing of two chimney-sweeps. The wit and 
absurdity of the dialogue are in Lady Gregory's 
best vein. " Darner's Gold " contains the story 
of a miser beset by his gold-himgry relations. 
Their hopes and plans are upset by one they had 
believed to be of the simple of the world, but 
who confounds the Wisdom of the Wise. ** The 
Full Moon " presents a little comedy enacted on 
an Irish railway station. It is characterized by 
humor of an original and delightful character 
and repartee that is distinctly clever. 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 



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